Romania’s Fixed-line Penetration Rate Hits Record High of 24.7% in H1 - Regulator

Voice traffic through fixed-line networks decreased by 16% year-on-year to 3.9 billion minutes in the first half of 2009, ANCOM said in a statement on Monday. The voice traffic through mobile networks grew by an annual 34% to 19.5 billion minutes at the end of June.

ANCOM added that the number of active mobile telephony users fell slightly to 24.41 million at the end of June from 24.47 million at end-2008, while the number of installed fixed lines went up to 5.31 million from 5.17 million at end-2008.

The fixed broadband internet segment rose by 5.0% from the end of 2008 to 2.64 million connections, while mobile broadband internet connections climbed to 2.4 million from 1.5 million.

“Although, we do not have data about operators’ revenues yet, informations from the market indicate that the operators’ revenues decreased by 10%-15%. Consumption increases, revenues decrease, which means the prices have dropped significantly,” head of ANCOM Catalin Marinescu said in the same statement.

Romania, population 21.5 million, has six wireless operators: the local units of France's Orange, global telecoms giant Vodafone and Greek Cosmote, Romanian telecommunications group RCS&RDS, Zapp Mobile, operated by Romanian-based Telemobil, and fixed-line operator Romtelecom, majority-owned by Greece’ OTE.

The main fixed-line operators in the country are Romtelecom, RCS&RDS and UPC Romania.