Bulgaria: Mobile Telecoms Market Overview
Mobiltel
Mobiltel (known locally as M-Tel) was the first network to begin operations in Bulgaria, founded in March 1994 and launching in September 1995, and is still the countries largest network.
The company was bought by the Mobilkom Austria Group in July 2005 for €1.6 billion, one of the largest foreign investments in Austria’s history.
Mobiltel was the first Bulgarian operator to offer EDGE, UMTS and HSDPA services to its clients, with video telephony services being available since 6 March 2006 in the capital Sofia.
GLOBUL
GLOBUL is Bulgaria’s second largest operator and a wholly owned subsidiary of Greek telecommunications company Cosmote.
GLOBUL had 4.1 million subscribers in the region by March 2008 around 40% of which are post-paid subscribers.
In 2005, GLOBUL received a licence for developing and implementing 3G UMTS mobile telecommunications network as well as a fixed telephony licence. In 2006 GLOBUL began offering NTT DoCoMo’s popular wireless Internet service i-mode on selected handsets.
GLOBUL launched its HSDPA network on the 25th September 2006, it began covering the capital city of Sofia; it then expanded to seven other large cities in the country and most of the country’s Black Sea and skiing resorts by the end of April 2007. As of end of 2008, GLOBUL’s 3G network covers over 35 Bulgarian cities and 3/4 of the population of Bulgaria.
GLOBUL received a licence for a WiMAX point-to-multipoint network in the 26GHz band, in 2007. This network has yet to launch commercially.
Vivatel
Vivatel started operating commercially in November 2005 with the launch of its 2G network, having received a GSM licence in June 2004 and a UMTS licence in May 2005, it then launched its 3G network in April 2007.
By November 2007, two years after its original launch, Vivatel had reached 1 million subscribers, over 10% of the market.
Vivatel are owned by Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC) a company which in May 2007 American International Group acquired 65% of for €1.08 billion.