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In 2001 M-tel launched its pre payment sim cards which allow customers to purchase credits prior to calling friends, this was a great success and saw the amount of customers using their network increase dramatically. The company had a market share of about 58% and 3,000,000 clients in September 2004. On 14 September 2006 M-tel reached 4,000,000 clients. As of May 2006 the company has 4,400,000 subscribers and its market share fell to 51,1%. Its contract customers increased to 1,7 mln, while the profit per customer dropped to 9,9 euro for Q1 2007.[http://www.mtel.bg/ The operator has been owned by Mobilkom Austria Group since July 2005, when it was acquired for up to -1.6 billion in one of Eastern Europe's largest deals and one of the largest foreign investments in Austria's history. On 22 February 2006, the company signed a partner network agreement with Vodafone. Mobiltel was the first Bulgarian operator to offer EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA and HSPA+ services to its clients, with video telephony services being available since 6 March 2006 in the capital Sofia and since mid-July 2006 throughout the Bulgarian Black Sea resorts [http://www.mtel.bg/. The company provides sending free SMS messages to its customers from the Internet. The company is the official sponsor of Bulgarian football club PFC Levski Sofia. Since 2005, the company also organizes the strong annual M-Tel Masters chess tournament, which is attended by six of the world's best International Grandmasters. |