Free cookie consent management tool by TermsFeed Actualizare preferințe cookie-uri
Press Releases

60% of Residential Fixed Internet Subscriptions Allow Data Transfer Speeds of at Least 30 Mbps

14.04.2014
 
The Romanian National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) published the statistical data regarding the market of fixed Internet access and fixed telephone services in 2013, which show a steady growth rate of the Internet access services. At the same time, notwithstanding some minor increases in the number of access lines and number of subscribers, the fixed telephone services are less and less used, the traffic volume dropping significantly.
The total number of fixed broadband Internet access connections reached 3.8 million at end-2013, increasing by 7%, as compared to the previous year. Out of these, approx. 3.5 million were installed to the residential users (+8% year-on-year), while the number of connections installed to business users remained steady at 0.34 million. As compared to end-2012, the penetration rate of fixed broadband Internet access connections per 100 inhabitants grew by 1.2 percentage points, to 18.8%, whereas the penetration rate per 100 households increased by 3.4 percentage points, up to 46.2%.
The steeper rising trend in the number of fixed connections installed in the rural area, compared to the urban one, was further noticed in 2013. Out of the total 3.8 million connections, approx. 1 million were installed in the rural area, an upsurge by 13% compared to 2012. The remaining 2.8 million connections were installed in the urban area, up by 5% year-on-year.
As regards the end-user access infrastructure, 2013 saw growths in the case of the main types of supports used therefor. Thus, the UTP/FTP cable connections reached almost 2.1 million (+6% compared to end-2012), the coaxial cable connections amounted to 540,000 (+18% compared to end-2012), whereas the xDSL connections, on copper support, exceeded 1 million (+4 compared to end-2012).
97% of the total fixed broadband Internet access connections (3.7 million connections) were provided by means of technologies involving the use of fibre optic up to a point close to the location of the end-user (94% of the total connections) or up to his/her home (3%), which allows for offering high data transfer speeds, of more than 30 Mbps.
As for the market of fixed telephone services, the reported data show that the number of access lines grew slightly to 4.7 million (+2% annually). This growth was mainly due to the rise in the number of access lines installed to the business subscribers (+9%). The number of fixed telephony subscribers reached 4.04 million, remaining relatively constant as compared to end-2012 (+1%). The fixed telephony penetration rate per 100 households was 51% at the end of 2013. 
The end-users’ traffic on the fixed public telephone networks kept falling in 2013, down to approx. 5.1 billion minutes (-7% annually). The on-net traffic registered an annual decrease of approx. 14% (to 2.5 billion minutes), whereas the traffic to other fixed networks dropped by 5% (to about 1 billion minutes). Furthermore, the fixed-to-mobile traffic grew by +6% (to 1.3 billion minutes), and the traffic to networks outside Romania rose by 9% (to 0.3 billion minutes).
In 2013, a user talked, on average, 1 hour and 30 minutes a month on his/her landline phone, 7 minutes less than in 2012, while the average duration of a call was 3 minutes and 14 seconds.
The statistical data report was drawn up based upon the data reported by the active providers of fixed telephone and fixed Internet access services, with commercial activity in 2013, and is available for consultation - in Romanian - here.