Matav’s majority shareholder , Deutsche Telekom was one of the largest Telecommunications companies in Europe, and was involved in all kinds of Telecommunication Business Services. Therefore , Matav benefited from the technical expertise of Deutsche Telekom , and became a fully integrated Telecommunications company. Even the culture of the corporation had changed into a customer-oriented culture after the privatization process. In February 1994 , Matav’s local telephone services covered about 80% of the territory of Hungary.
After it had been privatized from the state in 1993, Matav had a monopoly inside Hungary in a way that it operated 80 % of the country’s fixed line telephone system. But there were four other domestic incumbents that controlled the fixed lines in the remaining 20% of the country ( HTCC , Monortel , Emitel and Invitel ) . So , Matav had some kind of competitive advantages in its domestic markets.
Also , In mobile market , for instance , Matav controlled about 47% of the market , but was in a competition with two other companies : Pannon GSM (owned by TeleNor ) with 37 % of the market , and Vodafone with 16% . Tele2 and MonorTel were also being so active in the segment. Moreover , there was a great deal of competition between the fixed line business segment and the mobile segment.As for the internet segment , the ISP Axelero had Pantel ( owned by KPN , Holland ) as an active competitor.
As part of its successful strategy, Matav was trying to become an international telecommunications group , and its first international expansion was in 2001 through purchasing the majority share