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The number of mobile phone users fell again in the first quarter

2025-08-01 07:55:00, Aktualitet CNA

The number of active users of mobile services suffered a further decline in the first quarter of this year.

According to data from the Electronic and Postal Communications Authority (AKEP), the number of active users of these services reached 2.43 million, down 2.3% compared to the end of 2024 and 1.6% compared to the same period a year earlier.

The decline is even marked by the number of broadband internet users from mobile networks. The number of internet users dropped to 2.02 million, a decrease of 3.4% from the beginning of the year, but a slight increase of 0.4% compared to the same period a year ago.

In fact, the decline in the number of mobile phone users appears to be a long-term trend. Over the course of a decade, the number of active mobile phone users has fallen by more than 28%.

This can be explained by internal market factors, but perhaps also by demographic factors.

The number of mobile operators has been reduced from four to two, while it is increasingly rare for a user to have more than one mobile number. This trend was quite widespread until about a decade ago, before the price differentiation for on-net and off-net calls was banned.

Another factor that may have influenced the number of users in recent years is the agreement to abolish roaming fees in the Western Balkan countries. Since a good portion of foreign visitors to Albania come from neighboring countries, they no longer need to use Albanian numbers for their communication while in Albania.

Always in the long term, negative demographic trends and population shrinkage can also partially explain the decline in the number of active users.

However, in specific periods the strong growth of inbound tourism temporarily compensates for the impact of the above factors. Foreign tourists from outside the Western Balkans area generally use Albanian SIM cards during their stay in Albania.

During the third quarter of 2024, the number of active mobile users increased sharply from 2.52 million to 2.81 million. However, in the fourth quarter of 2024, the number of active subscribers immediately decreased sharply to 2.49 million, suggesting that tourism has a significant impact on the number of active mobile users.

On the other hand, mobile service consumption figures continue to show a long-term trend of concentration of these services on the internet and the decline of voice call and text messaging services.

For the first quarter of the year, data (internet) traffic increased by 8.8% compared to a year earlier, while average monthly data usage per user increased by 8.6%.

On the other hand, the total number of outgoing phone calls fell by 3.3%, while the number of text messages shrank by 4.8%. These figures show that communication is also increasingly shifting to OTT, internet-based applications./ Monitor