Average duration of mobile phone calls triples, fixed telephony loses ground

In around six years, the average duration of calls made from a fixed telephony line monthly shrank by around 1 hour, while time spent talking on the mobile phone registered a spectacular increase.

The average duration of calls initiated monthly from a fixed telephony line posted a dramatic decline in 2005-2010, from around 3 hours and 17 minutes in 2005, to 2 hours and 13 minutes in the first half of last year, according to the data provided by the communications regulatory authority. The steepest decline was registered in 2008, when the average duration of monthly calls from the fixed phone decreased by over half an hour.

2008 was the best in the history for the domestic mobile telephony industry in terms of revenues and profits. The mobile communications market in 2008 reached 2.8bn euros and Orange and Vodafone, the biggest players on the market, generated overall net income of above 700m euros.

In 2008, the average duration of calls initiated from a SIM card increased by 17 minutes, to 1 hour and 54 minutes, and the average number of clients went up from 18 million to over 22 million.

To boost consumption, mobile telephony operators increased the number of minutes included in subscriptions and particularly in the extra-options related to prepay cards, so that the average duration of calls rose from 1 hour and 54 minutes in 2008 to almost 3 hours in the first half of 2010.