Romania's Mobile Phone Penetration Rate Rises to 123% at End-June

The number of active SIM (subscriber identity module) cards as of June 30 rose to 26.5 million from 24.2 million at the end of last year, it said in its latest report on the telecommunications market in Romania. Nearly 68% of the subscribers used pre-paid cards.

The number of Internet connections in Romania rose by an annual 24.5% to some 2.3 million in the first half of this year. The Internet service penetration rate was 27.04%.

There are five wireless operators in the country of 21.6 million people: the local units of France's Orange, global telecoms giant Vodafone and Greek Cosmote, Romanian telecommunications group RCS&RDS, and Zapp Mobile, operated by Romanian-based Telemobil.

Romania's telecommunications market will not be seriously affected by the global crisis and will grow by 10% this year to almost five billion euro ($6.4 billion) in 2008 and will reach some six billion euro in 2009. In 2007, the market grew by 16.7% to 4.61 billion euro.

($ = 0.7871 euro)