The broadband Internet access services market in the first nine months of this year expanded. Sales on this market grew by 6.5% compared with the corresponding period last year to 975.9 million lei. The number of subscribers rose by 3.9% to over 608,100, IPN reports.

According to the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology, the rise in sales is due to the increase in the number of subscribers to high-speed fixed Internet. In nine months, the number of subscribers connected to the Internet based on optical fiber technology increased by 8.1% to over 378,000 subscribers, which is 62.2% of the total number of subscribers.

The number of subscribers connected to the Internet through coaxial cable rose by 1.2% to 6.9% of all the subscribers. The number of those connected to the global network based on xDSL technologies decreased by 4.2% to 30.4% of all the subscribers. The subscribers connected through other technologies represented 0.5%. The fixed Internet access penetration rate per 100 people rose by 0.7 percentage points to 17.1%.

Some 53.1% of the subscribers to fixed Internet access services benefit from Internet access and data transfer speeds ranging between 30 and 100 Mbps, 8.9% – of over 100 Mbps, 32.6% of 10 to 30 Mbps, 2% – of 2 to 10 Mbps, while 3.4% – of up to 2 Mbps.