The voice traffic in the mobile telephone networks in January – June rose by 11.2% compared with the corresponding period last year, exceeding 2.9 billion minutes, shows statistical data of the ICT regulator ANRCETI, IPN reports.

SA “Moldcell reported an increase of 46.1% in the voice traffic, SA “Orange Moldova” of 2.8% to over 2bn minutes, while SA “Moldtelecom” a decrease of 3.6% to 153.4 million minutes. The customers of SA “Orange Moldova” spoke 260 minutes on average a month over the mobile phone, of SA “Moldcell” - 143 minutes, while of SA “Moldtelecom” – 106 minutes.

The revenues obtained from the sale of these services came to 1.693 billion lei. The sales of SA “Moldcell” rose by 3.4%, of SA “Moldtelecom” decreased by 2.2%, while of SA “Orange Moldova” declined by 0.5%.

As regards the number of mobile phone users, statistics show that this number in the first half of this year decreased by 0.6% (28,200) compared with the end of 2013 to over 4.4 million. The penetration rate of these services fell by 0.7% to 123.7%. The ratio of SIM cards to people is 123:100.

According to specialists of ANRCETI, the decrease in the number of mobile phone users was caused by two factors – the migration of users to technologies that provide voice services through the Internet and the halt in using SIM cards of one provider or another following the termination of the promotional periods.