Internet penetration speeds up in Romania's rural areas but landline telephone still more frequent than internet connection

More Romanians were connected to the Internet at the end of 2012, when the number of fixed broadband internet connections was up 7.9 percent, to 3.5 million. The penetration rate per 100 inhabitants was of 18.6 percent, up 1.4 percentage points on 2011. Meanwhile, the penetration rate per 100 households went up by 3.3 percentage points, to 45.2 percent, according to the Romanian Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM). The biggest increase came from the countryside, which is explainable as it still has a low ratio of the total and tries to catch up. There were 0.9 million fixed broadband internet connections in Romania's rural areas at the end of 2012, an increase of 22.2 percent on the year before. The increase in the urban area was of only 3.9 percent. Landline telephony continues its decline, with a slightly lower penetration rate per 100 inhabitants – 23.2 percent. The penetration rate per 100 households was of 53.6 percent, which still makes the landline phone more common among Romanian households than an internet connection. Romanians used their landline on average for an hour and 40 minutes a month in 2012, 6 minutes less than in 2011, while the average length of a call was up slightly, to 3 minutes and 3 seconds. The full report – in Romanian – is available here. editor@romania-insider.com