Tuesday, October 17, 2006, during the international conference ”European Communications in Romania”, Mr. Dan Georgescu, President of the National Regulatory Authority for Communications (ANRC), declared that, according to the preliminary market data processed by ANRC for the first semester of 2006, the voice traffic generated by the Romanian users increased by 26.6%, as compared to the first semester of 2005, reaching 10.61 billion minutes.
This increase of the voice traffic is accompanied by an overall growth of the whole market of electronic communications. “Whereas, in 2005, the gross domestic product witnessed a real growth of 4.1%, as compared to 2004, the revenues in the communications market increased by 23%, exceeding EUR3 billion at the end of 2005. We are glad to see that competition is ever harsher. Within six months, the market share of the alternative fixed operators reached 15%, with a substantial growing rate of 50%”, the ANRC President, Mr. Dan Cristian Georgescu, pointed out during the conference, on which occasion he presented a set of preliminary data on the communications market.
On June 30, 2006, the total number of lines providing access to fixed telephone services exceeded 4.4 million. Furthermore, the market share of the alternative fixed operators reached 15%, with a total number of 650,000 telephone lines (both through the providers’ own networks and through third parties’ access networks). Most of the fixed telephone lines installed by the alternative operators (85.6%) belong to the residential users, as this indicator registered the greatest increase between June 2004 – June 2006 (approx. 94 times more).
Although the total voice traffic originated in the fixed public networks is in slight regression (approximately 4.1 billion minutes in the first semester of 2006, as compared to 4.2 billion, in the same period of 2005), the traffic achieved through the alternative operators’ networks increased significantly – by more than 140%. The alternative providers’ subscribers use the fixed telephone to call mainly on other networks than the one they subscribe to – 48.7% of the total traffic achieved by the alternative operators is traffic to other fixed networks.
The number and length of calls are constantly growing. In the first semester of 2006, the average length of a call initiated from a mobile telephone (excluding roaming) was of 1.51 minutes, as compared to 1.45, in 2005. As regards the fixed calls, the average voice call length was of 2.27 minutes in the first semester of 2006, as compared to 2.18 minutes, in 2005.
The increasing number of mobile telephony users (14.9 million, on June 30, 2006), as well as the growing average call length determined an increase of the mobile traffic volume by approximately 57%, as compared to the first semester of 2005, reaching more than 6.5 billion minutes. On this market segment, the main driver of the rising trend is represented by calls within one mobile network, which hold a 77% share of the total traffic. Most of the mobile telephony users (66%) prefer prepaid cards and only one third of them are subscribers.
The number of SMS sent in the first semester of 2006 increased by approximately 50% as compared to the same period of last year, exceeding 1 billion (excluding roaming SMS), whereas the MMS traffic increased by 46%, reaching 13.7 million MMS.
The ANRC President’s presentation is available here.