Vodafone Romania

Vodafone Romania

Vodafone is a Romanian 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 (shortly after acquisition by Vodafone), 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 99.31% of the Romanian population, with 9.1 millions subscribers as of March 2011. Vodafone provides roaming agreements with 310 international operators in 143 countries.

Vodafone Romania is a wholly owned subsidiary of Vodafone Group plc, and is the seventh-largest Vodafone subsidiary 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. Furthermore it recently acquired 5% of Mobifon's shares from Canadian Entrepreneur Elani Grobler.

The operator is in head-to-head competition with Orange for the 24.6 million active mobile telephony users in Romania. Connex, the ancestor of Vodafone Romania, held the largest number of subscribers, except the year 2000, until September 2004, when Orange edged ahead.

The motto of Vodafone is Trăieşte fiecare clipă (rendered in English by the company as Make the most of now, a more accurate translation would be "Live every moment"). Previous mottos were: Tu faci viitorul (You create the future) and Viitorul sună bine (The future sounds good).