The volume of voice traffic and the total volume of sales of mobile phone services in 2016 witnessed a decline, for the first time in the past few years. It happened amid the increase in the number of users of these services, IPN reports.

The statistics brought together by the ICT regulator ANRCETI show the volume of voice traffic in 2016 decreased by about 107.5 million minutes (-1.7%) on 2015 and totaled 6.2 billion minutes. Sales declined by 159.2 million lei (-4.4%) and came to about 3.4 billion lei. The number of users of telephone services rose by 105,800 (+2.4%) to 4.4 million.

Specialists of ANRCETI said the decline in the volume of voice traffic and sales of mobile phone services was due to the modification of consumer preferences from mobile telephone to alternative Internet communication solutions that are cheaper or free such as Skype and Viber.

The monthly average volume of traffic per user was of 225 minutes, while the average length of a call was less than 2 minutes.

The monthly average revenue per user of mobile phone decreased by 4.1% to 66.2 lei. Orange Moldova reported an ARPU of 75.3 lei, Moldcell of 57.6 lei, while Moldtelecom of 36.5 lei.

The mobile phone penetration rate per 100 people last year rose by 3 percentage points to 124.7%. This indicator shows there are over 124 SIM cards purchased from mobile phone carriers per 100 people. This means that a part of users have by two and more cards.