France Télécom sees steady revenue growth
France Télécom's consolidated revenue grew 9% year on year to €34.4bn (£21.7bn) and the company expects full-year revenue to...
Revenue from domestic fixed-line voice and data services continued its decline, down to €14bn (£8.8bn). This was largely because of a decline in fixed-line telephony revenue, which slipped to €10.3bn.
However, the company's revenue from fixed-line services outside France grew to €6.9bn with global telecommunications subsidiary Equant posting growth of 59.3%, which resulted in Equant's merger with Global One.
Pro-forma revenue growth for the nine months was just 0.6% for international activities as a whole, while pro-forma revenue from Equant declined by 6.8%.
France Télécom blamed Equant's performance on a 15.5% decline in revenue from integration services, which it attributed to the general economic slowdown, and a 6.2% decrease in revenue from its SITA division, which reduced prices on 1 July.
Mobile communications revenue also grew with Orange's subsidiary rising to €12.2bn, with average revenue per user (ARPU) rising in the company's two main markets, France and the UK.
The company's Internet service provision subsidiary, Wanadoo, put in a strong showing too. Revenue from the subsidiary for the nine months rose by 31.7% to €1.4bn, growing slightly slower than the number of customers, which was up 33.4% year on year at 30 September.
France Télécom only reports profit figures for its full-year and half-year results.