Malta had the highest mobile voice telephony prices in the EU last year with the local average cost per minute being 27c against the EU average of 14c, the Malta Communications Authority said in its annual report for 2008, which has been published this morning.

But the number of mobile subscribers continued to increase with the number reaching 385,636, a growth of 4.6 percent over the previous year.

As at the end of 2008, 14 percent of all mobile subscribers held a postpaid paln with the remaining 86 percent opting for prepaid services.

An increase of 26.7 million minutes in mobile originating traffice was registered last year, representing a 12 percent increase over the corresponding traffic in 2007. Mobile to mobile minutes accounted for around 88 percent of all mobile originated traffic.

SMS traffic declined from 511.4 miillion SMSs in 2007 to 503.8 million SMSs last year. This was mainly attributed to the promotional offers featuring free minute bundles which enticed users to make mobile calls instead of sending an SMS.

MMS traffic continued to suffer a downward trend, declining from 562,556 in 2007 to 360,195 in 2008.

Both outbound and inbound roaming minutes experienced a significant increase of 21.7 percent and 25.2 percent, respectively.

The report says that Malta enjoyed a mobile penetration rate of 94 percent, which was still lower than the EU average of 119 percent. Italy was the leading country in terms of mobile penetration having surpassed the 150 percent mark as at October.

The report said that total internet subscriptions reached 102,908 by the end of last year with broadband subscribers accounting for 98 percent of total internet subscriptions, reaching 100,915. This translated into a broadband penetration rate of 24.6 of the population.

Dial-up internet subscriptions continued to decline, with just 1,993 subscribers registered by the end of the fourth quarter of 2008 compared to 5,426 at the end of the previous year.

The MCA said that in 2008 Malta had a seven percent growth rate of broadband penetration, the highest in Europe, surpassing the EU average of 22.9 percent and ranking the country in the 11th place in terms of absolute penetration.

When it came to broadband penetration by household, Malta ranked seventh of all EU states.

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