Macedonia’s telecoms regulator Agency for Electronic Communications (AEC) has published a market update, showing that the country was home to a total of 2.21 million active mobile telephone users at 30 June 2012, up 2.0% year-on-year and 0.63% quarter-on-quarter. At the mid-year point, cellular penetration reached 107.7% according to the AEC’s findings, with users generating quarterly voice traffic of 984.1 million minutes, up 16.3% y-o-y. At the same date T-Mobile Macedonia led the pack with 49.92% of the segment, ahead of VIP Mobile (27.16%) and ONE (22.92%). The AEC also reported that the total number of mobile broadband users (including 2G and 3G users) climbed 1.5% y-o-y to 372,228, but noted the total was 3.0% down on the end of March 2012.
In the fixed telephony segment, the watchdog reported a total of 408,335 main lines in service at 30 June 2012, down 1.67% on the corresponding year-earlier period, and 1.69% lower than at 1Q12, equivalent to a fixed teledensity of 19.89%. In 2Q12 the total volume of fixed traffic reached 170.8 million minutes, a 16.41% slump y-o-y. Incumbent Makedonski Telekom (MTel) had a 67.29% share of fixed line users, ahead of ONE (15.59%), Blizoo (7.75%) and others (9.37%). The total number of fixed broadband connections stood at 297,805 at 30 June, up 10.63% y-o-y, while pay-TV users totalled 260,518 (+10.63%) – broken down as cable TV (169,831), IPTV (51,166), DVB-T (38,360) and TV/DTH (1,161).