16 Million Broadband Internet Connections as of end-2014 in Romania

28.04.2015

In Romania, the broadband internet continued to spread at high speeds during 2014. According to the preliminary statistical data presented by ANCOM within the 19th edition of the Communications Day, mobile broadband connections amounted to 12 million, growing by 25% year-on-year, while fixed broadband connections amounted to 4 million, growing by 6% year-on-year.

Out of the 12 million mobile broadband Internet acces connections, 10.7 million are using 3G and 3G+ technology and 709 thousand are achieved through 4G technology, all these connections generating a total traffic of more than 46 thousand terabytes. On average, a monthly traffic of 0.26 gigabytes through a mobile broadband connection was registered.

Subscription based mobile broadband Internet access connections exceeded the connections by means of prepaid cards. Thus, out of the 12 million connections, 6.4 million were subscription-based cards and 5.6 million were achieved by means of prepaid cards.

The growth of the total number of connections also led to an increase of the mobile broadband penetration rate, up to 60.2%, a 12 percentage points increase as compared to the end of 2013, respectively 25 percentage points increase as compared to end-2012.

Fixed broadband connections registered an annual growth by 5.8%, reaching 4 million connections, generating a total annual traffic of 3.6 million terabytes. In 2014, the monthly average traffic per user amounted to 76.1 gygabytes.

Within the total fixed broadband Internet acces connections, more than 91% have been installed to residential users and only 0.4 million to business users. As well, 73% of the total fixed Internet connections have been installed in rural area. Nevertheless, the steeper rising trend in the number of fixed connections installed in the rural area compared to the urban one was further noticed in 2014. Thus, out of the total 4 million connections, 2.9 million were installed in the urban area (+4.2%), while the rural area registered an increase of 10.2% connections during 2014, up to 1.1 million connections.

At the same time, the penetration rate of fixed broadband Internet access connections per 100 habitants amounted to 20.1%.

As regards the last mile infrastructure in the case of the fixed broadband internet, moderate increases have been registered in 2014 in terms of main support types and therefore the structure of the fixed internet access connections remained almost unchanged: approx. 2.3 million were UTP/FTP cable connections (58% of the total connections), the xDSL connections reached 1 million (25.9% of the total connections), whereas the coaxial cable connections maintained at 0.5 million (11.6% of the total connections).

“As different statistics published by international organizations or by companies reveal, Romania occupies an excellent position in international statistics as regards the data transfer rate: half of fixed Internet connections, meaning almost 2 million connections, enable speeds of more than 100 Mbps. In fact, the tests performed by the Romanian users on Netograf.ro in the first quarter of 2015 show that they experience real average speeds of 73 Mbps in the fixed broadband segment”, Mr. Catalin Marinescu, the president of ANCOM, said. The connections which enable speeds between 10 and 30 Mbps represent 24% of the total fixed Internet connections, the connections with speeds between 2 and 10 Mbps represent 15%, respectively 11% for the ones with speeds between 30 and 100 Mbps 11%.

Further information will be available very soon in the statistical data report, drawn up based on the data reported by the providers of electronic communications networks and services who undertook commercial activities in 2014.