Internet in Romania

ANRCTI, the Romanian National Regulatory Authority for Communications and Information Technology, reports that the total number of Internet access connections reached almost 5.8 million, registering a 76% increase in 2007 compared to 2006, whereas the number of broadband Internet dedicated access connections (excluding dial up and mobile access) reached 2.1 million, thus doubling the penetration rate (10% compared to 5% by end-2006).

The report shows that the most significant share (almost 55%) within the broadband Internet dedicated access connections is still held by the UTP/FTP cable connections, followed by the coaxial cable connections (22%) and by the xDSL connections (17%), which actually registered the most significant annual growth, by more than 270% compared to end-2006.

The fixed telephony registered a slight increase as well. Thus, in comparison with the previous year, as of December 31, 2007, the total number of access lines to fixed telephone services grew by 1.4%, reaching a total of 4.26 million lines, of which 1.22 million lines were installed by the alternative providers. In 2007, the lines installed by the alternative providers increased by 50%, and, therefore, their market shares reached almost 29% by the end of 2007.

Furthermore, the traffic volume achieved by the alternative providers’ users grew by 44%, in the context of a 2% increase of the total voice traffic originated in the public fixed telephone networks, up to approximately 8.5 billion minutes in 2007 compared to 8.3 billions in 2006.

The ANRCTI statistical data report indicates that the mobile telephony penetration rate reached 106.2% by the end of 2007, registering 22.9 million “users” (active SIM cards). 67% of these use prepaid cards, whereas approximately 33% (7.5 million) pay a monthly subscription. 67% (5.1 million) of the subscribers are natural persons and approximately one third (2.4 million) are legal persons.

The ANRCTI President remarked the significant growth (+87% in 2007 compared to 2006) of the roaming voice traffic achieved by the customers of the Romanian mobile telephony providers and appreciated that the introduction of the European maximum tariff in September 2006 represented one of the key-factors that encouraged the Romanians to use more the mobile telephone when travelling in the European Union’s Member States.

According to the statistical data report, as of December 31, 2007, the total number of subscribers to audio-visual retransmission programme services grew by 19%, mainly due to the consolidation of the level of use of the cable alternative solutions – the “direct-to-home” with satellite digital transmission registered a 177% annual increase – which attracted part of the customers living in the rural and urban areas without access to means enabling the reception of commercial television programme services.

The penetration rate of the audio-visual retransmission programme services per households reached 71.7%, increasing by 9.3 percentage points compared to half-2007, and respectively by 11.6% compared to end-2006.

The statistical data report was laid down based on the data reported by 99% of the authorised providers of electronic communications networks or services, who carried commercial activities between January 1 – June 30, 2007 and, respectively, July 1 – December 30, 2007.

Orange brings Macbook Air in Romania

Orange launched at CERF 2008 a new portable broadband solution. The thinnest laptop in the world, the Apple MacBook Air, the smallest USB modem in the world, Option ICON 225 and Internet Unlimited Start were created for the wireless world.

You can Connect to the internet wherever you are, at 3G+ speeds of up to 3.6 Mbps in over 300 localities in Romania and at EDGE speeds of up to 220 Kbps in the rest of the country.

The subscription fee starts from 10 euros. The price of the MacBook Air is 1689 euros including VAT.

IRIS, the Romanian distribuitor for Apple, will sell MacBook Air only after 2 weeks to those who pre-ordered him online.

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Wireless data prices fall, usage booms

Mobile data traffic ramped up between four- and eightfold in 2007 thanks to the knockout combination of dramatically decreasing prices and faster network downlink speeds, according to a report from Heavy Reading.

The surge in data traffic is extremely good news for operators, but the challenge they now face is how to withstand the reductions in data prices without destroying their business models and becoming mere bit-pipe providers.

In 2007, an eightfold increase in data traffic compared with 2006 levels was common for mobile operators that introduced competitive flat-rate data plans and weren't carrying much data traffic prior to the deployment of HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) technology, according to the report, "Flat IP Architectures in Mobile Networks: From 3G to LTE."

For operators with a lot of pre-HSPA 3G data traffic and without competitive flat-rate data plans, three- and fourfold increases in data traffic in 2007 were common.

Gabriel Brown, Heavy Reading senior analyst and the report's author, says it' is "no wonder that data usage is growing because performance is getting better and prices are coming down. 2007 was the breakthrough year. You're getting 1 Mbit/s to 2 Mbit/s downlink routinely, and prices have come down massively."

According to Brown's report, data traffic volumes at Telefónica O2 Europe plc doubled every quarter in 2007 after it launched a one Euro ($1.59) per day flat-rate service using USB modems in Spain. And T-Mobile International AG recorded a 57 percent increase in 3G data volumes in the third quarter last year compared with the previous three-month period.

Brown stresses that the increase in mobile data usage is primarily due to lower tariffs -- prices declined more than 300 percent in 2007, according to the report.

Now operators have to decide how low they can take their prices, and how they deal with the impact of the data surge on their business plans and strategies. "Mobile operators are essentially becoming ISPs," says Brown. "They are going down the bit-pipe road. They don't want to do that, particularly, but what should they do?"

In Europe, the price competition is most aggressive in markets where 3 Group is present, such as Austria, Italy, Sweden, and the U.K. 3 shook up the U.K. market in August last year with a £10 ($20) per month offer for a USB mobile broadband service.

The operator is reportedly ready to cut that offer by 50 percent to £5 ($10) per month.

Original article

Telsima's 50km broadband Internet connection at 450MHz

Telsima Corporation announced that is has successfully demonstrated a 50km (30mile) high capacity broadband connection using its Sub-GHz WiMAX system in a 3 MHz channel under near line of sight conditions in the 450 MHz frequency band. Telsima’s Sub-GHz solution is able to accommodate any carrier frequency from 400MHz to 1000MHz, enabling operators to rapidly deploy a tunable solution to suit their allocated frequency band.

The tests, conducted under over a period of several days in the months of February and March of 2008 in Slovenia, stimulated significant commercial interest for using 450MHz and other sub-GHz frequencies carrier grade frequency bands. The base station was located at Vir Domžale silos with a vertically polarized antenna with 10.15 dBi gain. The subscriber station, using a Yagi antenna with a 10.65 dBi gain, was installed in a car that drove across terrain that included dense foliage and wooded hills. At a distance of 50 km, at Javornik, the WiMAX system communication link yielded excellent results; modulating at 64QAM in the downlink and 16QAM in the uplink; providing over 6Mbps throughput over the wireless link.

Wolfgang Mack, CMO Telsima commented, “Compared to higher frequency systems, the Sub-GHz solutions are technically and economically suited for covering large areas where the foliage is dense and the terrain does not allow for line of sight communications between the subscriber station and base station. We are very optimistic in our Sub-GHz solution’s capability to address the needs of high coverage, low density markets with high modulation rate capacity”.

Burcak Beser, CTO Telsima, explains, “These lower frequencies perform better in wooded and hilly environments because of their superior wave propagation characteristics enabling large sectors and wave diffraction around interfering objects such as hills and buildings. Rural areas in global markets, where the subscriber density is lower, are therefore more efficiently served using these sub-GHz frequencies. Of particular significance of our system demonstration is the excellent connection quality; sustaining modulation rates of 64QAM in the downlink and 16QAM in the uplink in a WiMAX system configuration suitable for wireline replacement voice quality services.

Telsima’s 450/700 MHz solution includes Base Stations, Subscriber Stations, NMS and Service Provisioning. Telsima’s Sub-GHz systems are able to deliver Internet, Voice and Multimedia services over a wireless broadband connection to remote users where coverage is more important than initial system capacity. This solution was unveiled in December 2007 and is expected to be in commercial deployments in the second half of 2008.

Telsima’s mobile WiMAX product portfolio allows operators to offer mobile services, MIMO antenna diversity and ASN network control today while smoothly migrating to 802.16e-2005 and NWG ASN solutions once commercially available.

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