A1 Bulgaria
A1 Bulgaria (previously known as Mtel or Mobiltel) is a telecommunications company in Bulgaria owned by A1 Telekom Austria Group. History A1 Bulgaria was founded in March 1994 but was not launched commercially until September 1995 (as Citron). In 2001, M-Tel (the brand then) launched its prepayment sim cards which allowed customers to purchase credits prior to calling friends. This proved to be a great success and saw the number 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. 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 euros for Q1 2007. The operator has been owned by Telekom Austria Group since July 2005, when it was acquired for up to €1.6 billion in one of Central and Eastern Europe's largest deals and one of the largest foreign investments in Austria. Mobiltel was the first Bulgarian operator to offer EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, HSPA+ and second to offer LTE services to its clients, with video telephony services being available since 6 March