Mobile internet to take over the communications industry in Romania by 2020

Electronic communications services will migrate onto online platforms by 2020 and mobile internet will enfold all the other electronic communications services, Romanian electronic communications users expect. This is one of the conclusions derived from a survey ordered by Romania’s telecom regulator ANCOM, as part of the process of tailoring a regulatory strategy for the country’s telecommunications sector for the period 2016-2020. The respondents deem that mobile internet will prevail in the realm of electronic communications services. Young urban users (up to 30 years of age) and rural ones think that fixed internet usage will decrease while mobile internet will grow. Only business and media representatives, along with those of the authorities and of the academia still believe in the fixed internet growth. According to the users’ perception, mobile telephony use will keep growing considering the ever younger age of first use, with the release of high-performance terminals at lower prices and with the growing usage of mobile internet. On the other hand, some of the interviewed groups consider that data services will inevitably replace mobile telephony, once with the advance of applications enabling real-time communication using the internet (Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype calls), according to ANCOM. Moreover, the users perceive fixed telephony and linear television as being on a downward trend or even on the way to extinction, and see their replacement by mobile and, respectively, by internet access services as imminent. Considering this, ANCOM deems that, although digital services demand will remain uneven and deeply heterogeneous in Romania, in the 2020 timeframe, fixed internet will continue ensuring high transfer rates, mobile internet will witness intensive growth, based on traffic growth spurred by tariff reduction and quality improvement, while the border between traditional electronic communications services and “applications” or “content services”, will gradually fade out, generating new regulatory challenges. There were 16 million broadband internet connections in Romania, at the end of 2014, three-quarters of which were mobile connections (3G, 3G+, and 4G). The number of mobile broadband connections was 12 million, 25% higher compared to 2013, while the number of fixed broadband connections was 4 million, 6% higher than in the previous year, according to ANCOM data. Half of Romanians use the Internet Over half of Romania’s households have access to Internet Over 2.75 mln Romanians lack high-speed Internet access editor@romania-insider.com