Explosive growth in mobile voice telephony

Voice traffic from mobile phones has increased by nearly a quarter, underlining Malta's persistent growth in mobile telephony.

Mobile traffic grew by 23.3 per cent for the six months ending September 30 over the same period in 2005, according to the Malta Communications Authority's electronic communications market review.

The report shows that the mobile subscriptions base grew by 6.1 per cent, bringing the local penetration rate to 86 per cent. Though above the rate in France, Malta still ranks below the EU average of 100.4 per cent.

Just nine per cent of Maltese mobile phone subscribers are on contract, in stark contrast to the EU average of 42 per cent.

Though the most highly used form of communication is still the fixed network, it has continued on its downward trajectory, with a decrease of 9.6 per cent over the comparable period in 2005.

During the review period, text messaging grew by 4.7 per cent over the comparable period last year, which may be attributed to the promotional offers and the price differences between text and voice prices in Malta. In comparison, only Danish, Polish and Czech SMS prices are cheaper.

On the other hand, multimedia messaging traffic fell by 96,989 units over the previous reporting period, confirming that the growth of MMS has been limited. Tariff complexities and cost considerations could all contribute towards the slow start of MMS, the MCA says.

The period under review featured an increase in the usage of voice over internet protocol services. In fact, the Ten21 traffic accounted for a very substantial share of total international traffic registered during the reviewed period.

The total number of digital and analogue TV subscribers at the end of September stood at 108,204, translating into a year on increase of 8,633 subscribers and spelling a subscription-to-household ratio of 84.5 per cent.

Internet subscriptions were up by 6,553 from September 2005, a ratio of 23.5 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants.

Turning to the financial aspect, the report shows the communications industry produced Lm93.8 million worth of output by the end of last September.

During the first nine months of 2006, private households' expenditure on electronic communications services accounted for 6.1 per cent of their total expenditure, remaining fairly stable.

However, higher levels of productivity were registered in the communications industry than other sectors; on average almost double the output.

In a separate survey, the MCA probed e-commerce usage in Malta.

The most popular e-commerce uses of the internet were online banking (75 per cent of those who use the internet for e-commerce) and online shopping (74 per cent).

Better prices and convenience were the main reasons given for buying online. Of those who have made an online purchase, 75 per cent claimed to have done so only from foreign online shops, and just nine per cent from Maltese shops.