THE HAGUE: Dutch telecoms firm KPN hailed a rise in fortunes Wednesday, with profits up by nearly a third in 2017, despite the end of European roaming charges.
Net profits reached 485 million euros ($603 million), up 31 percent on 2016 when one-off expenses had hit the group's bottom line.
Chief executive Eelco Blok attributed the "substantial results" to KPN's new strategy.
"We have optimised our customer service and deployed a targeted household approach, which resulted in record-high customer satisfaction levels," he said in a statement.
Profits were also helped by "lower net finance expenses," KPN said.
Overall revenue, however, fell by 4.5 percent to 6.5 billion euros, KPN said, with a year-on-year fall of 2.5 percent in income from mobile phones.
A former state-owned company that was privatised in 1994, KPN has like other telecoms operators faced stiff competition from free internet call programmes such as Skype and WhatsApp.
The EU also scrapped roaming charges in June 2017, meaning that customers are charged the same for calls, text messages and internet use while travelling in other EU countries as they are at home.
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