90 pct of fixed Internet users search for news and 77 pct use it for socializing, says ANCOM

According to the latest data released by the National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM), nine out of ten Internet users in Romania use fixed home connection to search for information, read news and keep up to date with events, while 77 percent use it to access online socialization networks.

The agency classifies the purposes for which the Internet is used in the household into four categories: information, communication, recreation and electronic transactions.

Besides the need for information, Internet users in Romania access their fixed connection at home for communication, 75 percent of respondents communicating with family or friends via instant messaging and 71 percent of them exchanging e-mails.

Recreational activities come in third among the interests of Internet users, as evidenced by 61 percent of respondents watching online TV, videos or movies, and 52 percent of respondents accessing the fixed Internet at home to play online games.

Online shopping (39 percent) is still low in ranking compared to the other activities Romanians do online, while paying bills or making online bank transactions falls even lower (22 percent).

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The average of Internet use is at 24 days per month, with about three quarters of respondents accessing it daily or almost daily (90 percent for young people between 16 and 24 years), while 16 percent say they use it 2 or 3 times a week, and 4 percent once a week.

Fixed home Internet is usually accessed on a personal computer, 72 percent of Romanians using a PC or desktop, 61 percent a laptop or netbook, while 43 percent access the service on a smartphone and 32 percent on a tablet. Smart TVs are starting to win grounds in the Internet usage, though they are still relatively low, at 9 percent.

When choosing an internet connection, the main criterion that Internet users take into consideration is the financial aspect, 66 percent of Romanians considering the subscription price as important, while 62 percent of them are interested in the stability of the connection and 48 percent of maximum speeds of transfer provided by the supplier.

Internet users have two instruments created by ANCOM meant to help them identify the best suited offer, respectively Veritel.ro, an app that compares all available fixed Internet tariffs, and Netograf.ro, a site that measures and compares transfer rates of all fixed Internet providers in Romania.

The market study was conducted by Mercury Research for ANCOM, and was used by the authority in a market analysis designed to assess the level of competition on the broadband Internet services retail market.

The research was conducted between October and November 2014, on a sample of 1,469 people who use Internet at home and, nationally representative of population aged over 16 years. The margin of error is ± 2.6 percent at a confidence level of 95 percent.

Natalia Martian