Vodafone Romania
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Vodafone is Romania's second-largest mobile phone network operator. It launched in April 1997 as the first GSM network in Romania (although not the first mobile phone network). Until October 2005, it was known as Connex, after which it was rebranded Connex-Vodafone and in April 2006, the Connex name was dropped, the operator being simply known as Vodafone Romania, aligning itself with the global Vodafone brand.
Vodafone covers 95% of the Romanian population, with over 6.13 million subscribers at the end of 2005Săptămâna Financiară, "Câte un celular pentru fiecare buzunar", 13 February 2005, p. 10 and 45% market share. Vodafone provides roaming agreements with 238 international operators in 103 countries.
Vodafone Romania is a wholly owned subsidiary of Vodafone Group plc, and is the seventh-largest Vodafone subisidiary in the world by number of subscribers. Vodafone became the majority stakeholder after it brought 79% of Mobifon's shares from Canadian company Telesystems International Wireless, which had been the previous majority shareholder.
The operator is in head-to-head competition with Orange for the 13.7 million mobile telephony users in Romania. Connex, the ancestor of Vodafone Romania, held the largest number of subscribers until September 2004, when Orange edged ahead.
Other competitors are:
The motto of Vodafone is Trăieşte fiecare clipă (Make the most of now). Previous mottos were: Tu faci viitorul (You create the future) and Viitorul sună bine (The future sounds good).
Brands of Vodafone
Vodafone runs numerous others brands. They include:
- Xnet - one of the largest Romanian internet service providers
- myX - Romania's first mobile portal
- myBanking - mobile banking service
- myDomain - domain name service
History
- 1998: SMS services introduced
- 1999: Xnet Internet service introduced; High Speed Circuit Switched Data (HSCSD) technology introduced; mobile phones running on Connex donated to ambulance service of Oradea (first Romanian company to do so)
- 2000: WAP mobile Internet services launched
- 2001: myX, Romania's first mobile portal launched; SMS services such as dating, ringtones and logos are introduced; GPRS service launched
- 2002: GPRS prepaid introduced; first company in Europe to introduce World Wide Number (WWN) facilities; mobile banking introduced in cooperation with Banca Comerciala Romana (BCR).
- 2003: myBanking introduced - a service in collaboration with Raiffeisen Bank, for customers to pay Connex bills and do banking automatically
- 2003: Connex Meeting Call introduced.
- 2005: 3G services based on W-CDMA introduced, giving way to video telephony and broadband internet via mobile phone.
- 2005: In partnership with RIM, Connex launches the first BlackBerry service in Romania.
- 2005: Liliana Solomon is named CEO of Connex.
- November 1, 2005: The name of the operator is changed to Connex-Vodafone.
- April 27, 2006: The name of the operator is changed to Vodafone Romania.
See also
References
External links
- [Vodafone web site]
- [Vodafone to Acquire Control of MobiFon in Romania and Oskar in the Czech Republic]
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