Romanian communication market in the first half of 2010

Romanian Authority for Communication’s Management and Regulation (ANCOM) published a report covering Romanian electronics communication market in the 1st half of the current year

According to the report, the market registered increases in what concerns the broadband and mobile internet connections number, the traffic in voice and SMS services and decreases in numbers for the subscribers of fixed and mobile telephony  and for the ones that buy audiovisual retransmittion services.

ANCOM data for the 1st half of the year show that internet services showed the biggest growth, the mobile internet growing by 26%, to 5.77M connections, from 3.32M from broadband mobile points (through EDGE/CDMA/EV-DO/3G), up 31% compared to the end of last year.

Also, the number of fixed broadband internet connection grew by 4% compared to 2009’s end, to 2.93M.

The same report shows that the number of active users of mobile telephony decreased by 4% during the monitored period, to 24.4M, while the penetration rate of those services was, at the end of June, of  113,5%. In what concerns the type of mobile telephony services owned by the population, 67% are active pre-paid SIM cards and 33% subscription SIM cards.

Although the number of users decreased, the voice traffic continued to increase, by 11.7% compared to the 2nd quarter of 2009, to 25.5BN minutes. The total number of phone calls increased with only 5%, which means the increase is due to longer conversations.

Romanian mobile users have the most conversations (86%) and send the biggest number of SMS-es (93%) in their own network, according to the study.

The audiovisual subscriptions decreased, although there was registered an increased in what concerns the number of IPTV subscriptions.

ANCOM’s report was based on data reported by authorized providers that had commercial activities from January 1st to June 30.