The National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) has published the Half-yearly statistical data report on the telephone services provided over terrestrial public networks with access at a fixed location or with limited mobility, for the first semester of 2011. According to the data reported by the 51 providers active on the retail market, in the specified period the traffic and average length of a call declined whereas the number of access lines, the number of subscribers and the fixed telephony penetration rate increased.
Thus, the number of access lines augmented in the first half of 2011 by 4.1%, up to 4.89 million. With regard to the number of subscribers, after three consecutive semesters of decreases, the first half of 2011 marked a 3.6% growth and thus the total number of fixed subscribers exceeded again 4 million. An access line is the so-called “telephone post”, while a subscriber is the natural or legal person who concluded a contract with the service provider. One subscriber may have installed several access lines, each line having assigned its own telephone number.
The fixed telephony penetration rate per 100 inhabitants (computed as the ratio between the total amount of access lines and the number of inhabitants in Romania) reached 22.8% whereas the fixed telephony penetration rate per 100 households (computed as the ratio between the amount of access lines provided to residential subscribers and the number of households in Romania) rose to 52.2%.
Out of the 4.89 million fixed access lines, 3.82 million are installed to the residential subscribers (up by 3.4% as compared to the second half of 2010), and 1.07 million are installed to business subscribers (up by 6.8% as compared to the second half of 2010).
Furthermore, the end-users’ traffic volume on the fixed public telephone networks decreased by 6.7%, to 3.2 billion minutes. Thus, the voice traffic on the providers’ own fixed networks fell by 6.8% (down to approx. 1.9 billion minutes), the traffic to other fixed networks declined by 7.7% (to 575 million minutes), whereas the voice traffic to other mobile networks dropped by 1.1% (to 562 million minutes). The voice traffic to international networks grew by 6.3%, to 192 million minutes. 72% of the total voice traffic volume on public networks was achieved by residential users and 28% by business users.
As regards the evolution of the total voice traffic volume by type of service provision, 3.1 billion minutes represent the traffic originated on the providers’ own networks (down by 7% as compared to the second half of 2010) while 64 million minutes stand for the traffic originated on third parties’ fixed public networks (e.g. through carrier selection/pre-selection procedure) – up by 14.7% as compared to the second semester of 2010.
On average, a Romanian user talked for 3 minutes and 2 seconds in the first semester of 2011, and the average length of a fixed call decreased by 0.7% as compared to the second half of 2010. The average length of a call originated on the providers’ own fixed telephone networks grew by 2.8%, up to 3 minutes and 15 seconds, while the average duration of a call originated on third parties’ fixed public networks fell by 26.9% to 40 seconds. As well, the monthly average voice traffic decreased by 10.4%, a Romanian user talking – per month – for 1 hour and 50 minutes on the landline telephone, less by 13 minutes as compared to the second semester of 2010.
The statistical data report was elaborated based on the data reported by the providers of fixed telephone services, which carried out commercial activities between 1 January and 30 June 2011, and is available for consultation here.