Due to that, the country’s penetration rate also declined: the penetration rate now stands at 92.53%, down from 98.71% in the first half of 2010 and down from the 99.13% penetration rate in second quarter of 2009. Conatel believes that the penetration ratae will continue to drop since carriers will continue to make disconnections of expired lines. Total mobile penetration (that include these lines) was 104.49% by fourth-quarter 2009, fell to 101.63% in third-quarter 2010 and now is 97.59%.Nearly all (93.6%) of Venezuela’s subscribers are prepaid.
Conatel said text messaging continues to increase. A total of 22 million text message were sent in the second quarter, which is greater than the number of phone calls. During reference period, subscribers used 8.311 million minutes, coming to an average of 2.64 text messages per minute of calls made. Regarding technologies, 60.57% of subscribers use the GSM protocol, while 39.43% of users have CDMA technology.
Internet service subscribers rose 22% in the second quarter, for a total of 2.9 million customers. In terms of access, broadband grew by 21.6% and mobile broadband accounted for 36.46% of all clients in this category, while fixed broadband users represented 63.54%.However, dial-up is still growing. A total of 253,841 subscribers use dial-up services, up 26.36% from Q2 2010. Nearly 92% of dial-up subscribers are residential users.
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