ANCOM: Romanian telecom market doubled its value in the past 13 years

The value of the electronic communications market in Romania has doubled from RON 7.38 billion in 2003 to RON 14.96 billion in 2016, the National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) informs.

The number of users and connections is growing in almost all segments in Romania, with over 27 million access connections to fixed and mobile telephony services reported, up by 137 percent than the 11.4 million registered in 2003, growth due to mobile telephony.

Fixed and mobile Internet has evolved significantly in terms of both connections, structure, and traffic. Thus, the number of fixed broadband Internet access connections increased from 14,000, which was reported at the end of 2003 to 4.4 million at the end of 2016 and the number of broadband mobile connections increased to 16.6 million at the end of 2016, from 181,000 at end-2003.

Internet consumption in Romania is mostly done via fixed connections, although they are far fewer than mobile connections. Thus, total traffic registered last year by fixed networks was 5.4 million TB, while mobile networks recorded a traffic of 169,000 TB.

The number of mobile users (active SIM cards) amounted to 22.9 million at the end-2016, more than three times higher than in 2003, when there were 7 million users.

Total voice traffic has increased 16 times over the past 13 years, from 4.4 billion minutes in 2003 to 70.6 billion minutes in 2016, amid the growth of nearly five times (from 56 to 257 minutes) of the average monthly voice traffic made by a user and the number of users.

Telecom industry continues to have a significant contribution to Romania’s GDP, both in 2003 and in 2016, representing 3.9 percent and 2 percent respectively.