ANCOM: Subscriptions exceeded prepaid cards for the first time

During 2016, the tendency to increase the number of mobile subscriptions users to the detriment of those using active prepaid cards was maintained, reaching for the first time a number of subscriptions higher than active prepaid cards, the National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) informs.

Romanian phone users spoke 1 hour and 4 minutes on average each month of 2016 by fixed networks and four times more through mobile networks (4 hours and 17 minutes). Although, a call from the fixed phone (3 minutes and 4 seconds) lasts on average more than one on the mobile (2 minutes and 37 seconds), the difference between the two traffic categories decreases from year to year.

At end-2016, there were 22.9 million active mobile users in Romania (down by 1 percent year-on-year), of which 11.5 million (+ 8 percent) were subscription-based users and 11.4 million (-9 percent) users based on prepaid active cards. The increase in the number of subscriptions is mainly due to the individual users who prefer this type of access to mobile telephony services, their number increasing by 11 percent in 2016 to 8.6 million.

The penetration rate in the population of active SIM cards for mobile services reached 116 percent at the end of 2016.

According to the same ANCOM data, the total number of SMS messages dropped in 2016 by 10 percent, to 18 billion messages, most likely due to the increased use of other methods of instant messaging.