National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology of the Republic of Moldova

The Report of the National Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Information Technology (ANRCETI) on Evolution of the electronic communications market in 2016, published on its official web page, shows that this year mobile and fixed Internet access services continued to be the most dynamic markets in the electronic communications sector. The main indicators of these markets (revenues, number of users, penetration rates, data traffic) attested the largest increase in the sector.

According to the Report, the total volume of revenues on the two markets increased over 2015 by 12% and exceeded 1,8 billion lei, which makes about 27% of the total electronic communications market value. The number of mobile broadband users (3G, 4G and dedicated access, high speed technologies) increased by 30% to over 1 million 893,5 thousand, the number of fixed broadband users - 4,3%, to a total of over 557,4 thousand. As a result, the penetration rate of mobile Internet per 100 inhabitants reached 54%, of fixed Internet - 15,7%.

The authors of the report consider that the ascending trend of mobile and fixed Internet markets is due to the increasing demand for the services, intensified competition between providers, development of access infrastructure to the global Internet on basis of 3G, 4G and fiber.

The increased revenues on the mobile and fixed Internet markets, as well as revenues from other electronic communications activities (+14,5%) occurred together with a significant decrease of the revenues on the other three markets: mobile telephony, fixed telephony, audiovisual broadcasting and retransmission. After a period of stagnation for several years, the revenues on the mobile telephony market decreased by 4,4% compared to 2015 and reached 3 billion 441,9 million lei, while the revenues on the fixed telephony market, which had been declining for ten years, decreased by 14% and showed 876.1 million lei. At the same time, the volume of revenues on the audiovisual broadcasting and retransmission market decreased by 18,9% to 297,8 million lei.

The decrease of revenues on the market segments above produced 2,9% decrease of the total volume of revenues in the electronic communications sector, which dropped to 6 billion 730,6 million lei. ANRCETI notes that the recession of fixed telephony and mobile telephony is determined by the changing of voice users’ preferences from fixed to mobile telephony and from mobile telephony to alternative internet communications services that are cheaper or free (OTT applications: Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, etc.). ANRCETI specialists believe that this trend, which is also evident on the European telephony markets, will become more evident in the coming years, when most consumers will use mobile communications services via smartphones.

ANRCETI estimates that mobile and fixed Internet access services will continue to be the most dynamic markets in the electronic communications sector in the coming years, being the main drivers of growth in the sector.

Annually, before April 30, ANRCETI develops and publishes, based on statistical data presented by providers of public electronic communications networks and/or services, the report on the evolution of electronic communications market in the previous years. These Reports are published on ANRCETI official Web page and are downloadable.

April 27, 2017