Moldova's telecommunications sector is dominated by state-owned fixed-line operator, Moldtelecom, which served 880,680 telephone subscribers at the end of September 2005 (approximately 26 lines per 100 population). Some degree of liberalisation is evident, with 24 alternative operators authorised to offer fixed-line local telephony services at the end of June 2005 (latest data). However, only five of these were active at that time and, as a reseller of network capacity, the telecommunications arm of national rail operator SC Calea Ferata can hardly be said to pose much of a threat (although it did account for 0.4% of all fixed lines at the end of September 2005, with all others accounting for just 0.1%). The mobile communications market is similarly lacking in competition; it is currently shared between two GSM cellular operators, Voxtel and Moldcell. A third GSM licence was issued to Moldtelecom in 2003, but this was done mainly to tempt potential strategic investors ahead of a privatisation that has yet to materialise. An attempt was made in 2005 to issue new CDMA licensees, but the tender was called off so that the technical terms of the licences could be revised.
There is, however, a great deal of activity in the data and informatics market, with a total of 552 licensees registered at the end of October 2005 (although it should be noted that very few of these were active at that time and most were service providers rather than network operators). It is here that Moldtelecom faces its most potent threat, in the form of VoIP operators (although Moldtelecom is itself the largest VoIP operator of all). There were 71 VoIP operators licensed at the end of 2004, of which only 15 were active and, of that number, just two were operating their own networks.
During 2004, the number of broadband connections increased by around 367.5%; this was principally due to the takeup of ADSL. At the end of 2004, broadband accounted for 13.2% of dedicated data/Internet connections, up from 6.5% in 2003. All remaining connections were based on narrowband technology.
Nevertheless, penetration of basic services in Moldova remains alarmingly low, with 47.4% of households possessing no fixed-line telephones at the end of 2004; this was an improvement on the 51.5% without phones in 2003, 56.2% in 2002, 59.7% in 2001, and 63.3% in 2000.
This report provides a complete review of Moldova's telecommunications market.
|
0 items
