Statistics for January-September this year show that the number of mobile phone users and voice traffic in mobile phone networks continued to rise, while the revenues of mobile phone carriers decreased. According to the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology (ANRCETI), the number of users in the first nine months of this year rose by over 63,700 (+1.4%) to over 4.4 million (SIM cards), IPN reports.

The volume of voice traffic increased by 11.4 million minutes compared with the corresponding period last year to 4.640 billion minutes, while total revenues decreased by over 120.2 million lei (-4.6%) to over 2.519,4 billion lei.

Moldtelecom increased its client base by 4.5% to 366,500, while Orange Moldova by 1.9% to 2.617,7 billion lei. The number of customers of Moldcell decreased by 0.13% to 1.508,7 million. As a result, the mobile phone penetration rate (SIM cards) per 100 people grew by 1.9% to 126.5%.

The monthly average volume of traffic per user came to 261 minutes (4. 21 hours), while the length of a call was 1.7 minutes on average. The monthly average revenue per user was 74.7 lei.

The decline in revenues from mobile phone services was caused by three key factors. The first factor is the change in consumer preferences of mobile phone users, who more broadly use alternative communication services, such as Skype, Viber and others. The second factor is the decrease in revenues from network interconnection services following the diminution of the highest national call termination rates by about 30%. The third factor is the saturation of the mobile phone market. This tendency has become more evident in the last few years.

The market shares of the three mobile phone carries by revenues didn’t change significantly in the period. At the end of September, Orange Moldova had a market share of 64.6%, Moldcell of 30.9%, while Moldtelecom of 4.5%.