Telecommunications in Moldova

Telecommunications in Moldova are maintained at a relatively high performance level. Because Moldova is a small country in terms of its territory telecommunications companies managed to achieve good coverage in both wired and wireless communications infrastructure. Landline is available in most settlements but is slowly being phased out by mobile phones whose coverage and availability are far superior to that of the landline in almost every respect. Mobile communications infrastructure are fairly well developed but suffer from high prices, non the less the amount of mobile subscriptions is growing very fast compared to the landline. As far as the Internet is concerned, Moldova has one of the best wired Internet connections in the world as well as one of the cheapest in terms of $ per Mbit.

Landline

After the break of the Soviet Union Moldova's telecommunications facilities were in a very poor condition. In 1990 Moldova had an average of 11 telephones per 100 inhabitants and there were more than 200,000 unfilled orders for telephone installations. The situation didn't progress much as only around 24,000 new lines were installed by 1994. Only after 1995 the state owned Moldtelecom began to upgrade their lines and stations. When in 1999 Moldtelecom became a JSC the company began a rapid upgrade process of all of their equipment and installations across the country. In 2000 around 440,000 new lines were installed and the overall power of telephone stations was increased to 645,000 numbers, at that time the average number of telephones per 100 inh. was around 16. The upgrade process to digital has also sped up and in 2008 around 83% of all stations were digital, for example in 1993 only 4% of all stations were digital. Currently all stations in the country are digital and the number of installed lines has reached 1,179,000 with around 33 telephones per 100 inh. Currently Moldtelecom is the dominant provider in this industry holding 95.5% of the market share, the rest are shared between some ISP's who provide triple play options to their customers however most if not all of them rent lines from Moldtelecom.
Until recently an open dialing plan was used but as of April 1, 2012 Moldova has implemented a closed dialing plan on all of its territory.

Landline Subscriptions and Penetration level. (2011)^[1]

Number of Landline Subscriptions - 1,179,900 (2011)

Landline Penetration Level - 33.14% (2011)

Market Structure by Number of Users. (2011)^[2]

Moldtelecom - 95.5%

Other Providers - 4.5%

Mobile telephony

The mobile telephone market of Moldova is divided between two GSM carriers - Orange Moldova and Moldcell, and two CDMA carriers - Unité and Interdnestrcom. Orange Moldova launched its network in October 1998 under the brand of Voxtel and was the first and only carrier at the time. In April 2000 TeliaSonera entered the market with its own network under the brand of Moldcell and thus became the second carrier in the country. Moldtelecom became the third carrier when it launched its own network in March 2007 under the brand of Unité. In December 2007 another carrier named Eventis entered the market but three previous carriers have already saturated it so much that on February 5, 2010 Eventis declared bankruptcy and shut down its network.
After the War of Transnistria in early 90's Transnistrian government denied access of operation for many Moldavian based companies on its territory including telecommunications companies. As such the only major carrier on its territory is Interdnestrcom or IDC who began its operation in 1998.
Unlike Internet market the state of the mobile market in the country is very poor, while coverage is not really an issue all carriers practice archaic methods that carriers in many developed countries have long since abolished, general prices are very high compared to other CIS and even EU countries with no change in this segment in many years in fact in some cases the prices have even increased, mobile Internet access is in no better condition with very high prices and very low monthly caps compared to extremely well developed and cheap wired Internet access.
The first millionth subscription was registered in September 2005 since then the number of subscriptions has more than tripled and now amounts to around 3,715,000 which is a bit more than the estimated population of the country, this means that the penetration level has exceeded 100%.
In October 2008 Moldcell became the first carrier in Moldova to launch a 3G network, currently all carriers provide 3G services throughout the country. In September 2009 Moldova became the first country in the world to launch high-definition voice services (HD voice) for mobile phones, and the first country in Europe to launch 14.4 Mbit/s mobile broadband at a national scale, with over 40% population coverage. As of February 2012 all Moldavian carriers are ready to start providing LTE services and are waiting for the regulatory approval.