Optimus Telecomunicações, S.A.
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| Sociedade Anónima | |
| Traded as | Euronext: SNC |
| Industry | Telecommunications |
| Founded | 15 September 1998 and in 2013 merged with ZON Multimedia |
| Headquarters | Lisbon, Portugal |
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Area served
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Portugal |
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Key people
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Miguel Almeida (CEO) |
| Products | Mobile Fixed Broadband Internet |
| Services | NOS (mobile) |
| Revenue |
 €863,6 million (2011)
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 €82,5 million (2011)
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€62,6 million (2011)
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| Total assets |
€2.019,8 million (2011)
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| Total equity |
€1.021,4 million (2011)
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Number of employees
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2,016 (2011) |
| Parent | NOS |
| Website | www |
NOS Comunicações, S.A. (formerly Optimus) is a Portuguese GSM/UMTS/LTE mobile operator. As of 16 May 2014, Optimus was merged with ZON Multimédia and formed a new company called NOS. Optimus was a wholly owned subsidiary of Sonaecom (a sub-holding of Portuguese conglomerate Sonae).
Optimus operation started on September 15, 1998, against the two longer-established operators TMN and Telecel, now a subsidiary of the Vodafone Group. The start was preceded by an intense and original advertising campaign. The form found by the company to bring in customers was the creation of a statute called Pioneiros (Pioneers), where pre-registered customers could make low-cost calls for life, just 5 escudos (0,025 Euro) per minute to other Optimus customers – a fraction of then current mobile tariffs. The campaign also benefitted enormously by parent Sonae owning the Continente chain of hypermarkets, thus reaching mass-market at a cost-effective rate.
Optimus prefix was 93. Numbers were 10 or 11-digits long. Optimus adopted the concept of pre-paid cards, which had been invented in Portugal and was already a success with its competitors, by creating the Boomerang tariff plan.
The very aggressive strategy used by Optimus to enter the Portuguese mobile telecommunications market paid off, because it attracted 700,000 customers in only one year of operation (by October 1999). Market share was 13%.
In September 1999, Optimus parent Sonaecom launched Novis, a fixed-line operator, and Clix, an Internet service provider and web portal.
In January 2000, Optimus collected another GSM award in Cannes for the best GSM innovation for its Taxi Digital (Digital Taxi) project to use the Optimus network in the transmission and processing of data between taxi dispatch centrals and their cars.
In 2000, the company's prefix was changed from 0933 to 93 as part of the country's new numbering system. All other digits remained the same, for 9-digit long numbers.
In June 2000, Optimus reached the one millionth customer, approximately 80% of which were buyers of pre-paid cards. Its market share had by then climbed to 16%.
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Wikipedia