Over half of Romania’s households have access to the Internet

More than half of all households in Romania, namely 54.4%, have access to the Internet at home, over 70% of them being located in urban areas, according to the recent data published by the National Statistics Office (INS). Over 76% of the households located in the Bucharest-Ilfov region have access to the Internet, followed by West and North-West regions – 61.3% and 58.3% respectively. The lowest shares were recorded in the South-Muntenia region, where some 46% of the total households have access to the Internet, the South-West Oltenia region (47.1%) and the North-East region (47.3%). Most of the Romanian households which have access to the Internet, namely 84.7%, use PCs to connect to the Internet from home, while one in three households use portable computers such as laptops or tablets. The data also reveals that only 20% of all households use other devices such as mobile phones or smartphones to access to Internet. The types of connections used to access the Internet are: fixed broadband connections – in a proportion of over 88%, mobile broadband connections – 24.5% and narrowband connections – 9.1%. Some 61% of all people aged between 16 and 74 have used the Internet at least once, shows the INS. Among current users, 60% use this tool on a daily basis or almost daily. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com