The volume of voice traffic in the mobile phone networks in January – September 2015 rose by about 5% on the corresponding period last year, to over 4.7 billion minutes. The statistics published by the national ICT regulator show the average volume of monthly traffic per user increased by 8.2% to 225 minutes or 3.45 hours, IPN reports.

According to the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology, the clients of Orange Moldova spoke most of all on the mobile phone - 274 minutes on average a month. The clients of Moldcell spoke 167 minutes over the mobile phone a month, while those of Moldtelecom (Unite) - 113 minutes. Following the increase in the volume of voice traffic, the revenues of the three providers rose by about 2% to over 2.7 billion lei. In particular, Moldcell and Moldtelecom augmented their sales by 8.4% and, respectively, 7.7%, to 741.1 million lei and 101.4 million lei. The sales of Orange Moldova fell by 0.8% to 1.8 billion lei.

As a result, the monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) of mobile phone services grew by 3.7% to 68.8 lei. Orange Moldova reported an ARPU of 81.1 lei, Moldcell – of 55.7 lei, while Moldtelecom – of 33.6 lei.

In the first nine months of this year, the total number of mobile phone users fell by 0.9% compared with the end of 2014 to over 4.3 million. The mobile phone penetration rate per 100 people decreased to 121.8%.

The market share of the three telecoms carriers remained almost the same as at the start of 2015. Orange Moldova held a market share of 68.7% by turnover, Moldcell – of 27.5%, while Moldtelecom – of 3.8%.