“Almost 3 times and a half grew 4G connections in Romania in one year, from less than 800,000 in 2014, to 2.7 million in 2015. This confirms the Romanian users’ interest for high performance terminals, mobility and speed, as well as the fact that operators have invested in networks in the recent years, which also determined the rise and upsurge of the demand for such services, declared the ANCOM President, Catalin Marinescu, during this year’s edition of ”ZF Mobilio”, an event organised by Ziarul Financiar.    

 

Furthermore, ANCOM’s President revealed in a presentation delivered during the event that – by the end of 2015, there were 14.7 million broadband mobile connections in Romania, this figure growing by 22% in one year. Thus, the broadband mobile penetration rate per 100 inhabitants reached 74%, over 13 p.p. more than at end-2014.

 

9 million out of the 14.7 million broadband mobile connections are based on a subscription, registering a growth by 40% y.o.y., whereas prepaid card-based connections grew by only 1%, up to 5.7 million.

 

The total traffic achieved by means of these connections doubled during 2015, from 46 thousand TB in 2014 to 99 thousand TB in 2015. Moreover, the average monthly traffic per connection grew from 0.26 GB to 0.48 GB.

 

In respect of mobile telephony, at the end of 2015, there were 23.1 million active users of such services in Romania, 1% more compared to 2014. Nevertheless, the number of subscription-based users kept growing, reaching 10.7 million (+8%), while the number of active prepaid cards decreased by 5% (to 12.5 million). Mobile telephony penetration rate per 100 inhabitants reached 116.4%, at the end of 2015.

 

Despite the fairly constant number of mobile telephony users, the total traffic achieved by these increased in 2015 by 4% compared to 2014, to approximately 70 billion minutes. Significant growth was registered in respect of international traffic (+76% up to 3.7 billion minutes) and of off-net traffic (+64% to 14.9 billion minutes). One of the key factors that determined such growth in the off-net traffic is the launch of attractive offers - with national minutes included - on the retail market, following ANCOM’s intervention in the wholesale market by regulating the ceiling of mobile termination tariffs. Traffic to fixed networks grew by 3%, whereas on-net traffic dropped by 9%.

 

In 2015, the users sent over 20 billion SMS messages, 3% more than in 2014, 85% of these being sent on-net. While more than half of the voice traffic is achieved by subscription-based users, 40% of the SMS traffic is achieved by such users.

 

In 2015, the average length of a call from a mobile terminal rose to 2 minutes and 32 seconds, while the average voice traffic achieved by one active user in a month was 4 hours and 13 minutes, 7 minutes more than the average registered in 2014. An average user sent 74 SMS per month.

 

Concerning the roaming services, voice traffic kept a steep growing trend in 2015, by 63%, exceeding 1 billion minutes (of which, 361 million outgoing and 690 million incoming). Roaming SMS traffic grew by approximately 5% last year, up to 129 million messages. The roaming data consumption also registered a significant increase, growing three times - from 202 thousand GB in 2014 to 606 thousand GB in 2015.

 

The statistical data report on the Romanian electronic communications market in 2015 has been drawn up by ANCOM based on the data reported by the active providers of electronic communications that conducted economic activity in the period 1 July – 31 December 2015, and is available, in Romanian, here. The presentation delivered by Catalin Marinescu at ZF Mobilio 2016 is available, in Romanian, here.