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Fixed Internet Continues Growth in Romania
22.05.2013
The Romanian Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) has published, today, the statistical data regarding the markets of Internet access and telephony services provided at fixed locations, for the year 2012, reflecting that the previous years’ trends are preserved in these two markets: the fixed internet access market is constantly growing, while the fixed telephony services are further declining.
Thus, in the segment of fixed internet access services, the number of broadband internet access services increased by 7.9%, reaching 3.5 million, by the end of 2012. Both the number of fixed broadband internet access connections of residential users, and the number of such connections for business users increased by 8% in 2012; thus, by the end of the year, there were 3.2 million connections installed for residential users and 0.34 million installed for business users. Compared to end-2011, the penetration rate of fixed broadband internet access connections per 100 inhabitants rose to 18.6%, by 1.4 percentage points, whereas the penetration rate per 100 households grew by 3.3 percentage points, up to 45.2%.
The data also reveal a steeper rising trend in the number of fixed connections installed in the rural area, compared to the urban one. Out of the total number of 3.5 million connections, approximately 0.9 million were installed in the rural area, at end-2012, i.e. an upsurge by 22.2% compared to 2011. 2.67 million connections were installed in the urban area, by 3.9% more, in one year.
Concerning the end-user access infrastructure, the most important annual increments in absolute values were registered in the connections using UTP/FTP cable (+166 thousand, up to 2.0 million), coaxial cable connections (+41 thousand, up to 0.45 million) and the connections on twisted metallic pairs (+28 thousand, up to 1 million connections).
It is noteworthy that, out of the total number of the fixed broadband internet access connections, 3.15 million (88.9%) use the FTTx technology, a technology based on fibre optic up to the end-user’s location or up to a point close to the end-user’s location, the last access segment being ensured by other types of support (e.g. coaxial cable, radio, UTP/FTP cable, twisted metallic pairs), which allows for high data transfer rates.
According to the statistical data reported by the fixed telephony providers, 2012 saw a decrease both in the number of access lines (-5.4% compared to 2011, down to 4.43 million lines), and in the number of subscribers (-0.6%, to 4.01 million subscribers). An access line is, in fact, a so-called ”landline” installed, whereas a subscriber is a natural or legal person that concluded a contract with the service provider, for one or several access services.
Following the decline of the number of landlines, the fixed telephony penetration rate per 100 inhabitants drops slightly, to 23.2%, while the fixed telephony penetration rate per 100 households decreases, as well, to 53.6%.
The traffic achieved by the end-users on the fixed public telephony networks keeps falling in 2012, by 8.8% per year, down to 5.4 billion minutes. On-net voice traffic sank by 17% per year (to 2.9 billion minutes), while off-net fixed traffic, fixed-to-mobile traffic and international traffic augmented by 3.6% (to 1 billion minutes), respectively by 4.2% (up to 1.2 billion minutes) and by 1.4% (up to 284 billion minutes).
In 2012, a user talked, on average, 1 hour and 40 minutes per month, 6 minutes less than in 2011, whereas the average duration of a call witnesses a slight increase, by 0.5%, to 3 minutes and 13 seconds.
The statistical data report was drawn up based on the data reported by the active providers of fixed telephony and internet access services who had commercial activity in 2012, and is available for consultation - in Romanian - here.
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