Croatia's electronic communications market generated nearly 9 billion (€1.2 billion) in revenue in the period from January to September 2022, an increase of 3.2 percent year-on-year, the state news platform Hina said on Monday, ciing data released by the telecom regulator Hakom.

“The increase was mainly due to the growth of revenue from broadband internet access, network and cable rental, and pay television,” Hina said.

Investment in very high capacity networks increased by 17 percent year-on-year, and investment in base stations for mobile networks rose by 9 percent, Hina said, without saying how much these investments totaled.

Data for Q3 2022 showed that total revenues from internet access services was 1.6 billion kuna (€211 million), or 4.4 percent up year-on-year, and the number of access connections increased by 5 percent, to reach 6.2 million. This includes mobile network connections, which totaled 5.1 million. The total data traffic using broadband technology increased by 26 percent, to 905 million GB’s.

Revenues from mobile phone services increased by 10.4 percent to slightly over 1 billion kuna (€132 million), and the number of users grew by 1.6 percent to 4.6 million. On the other hand, revenue from landline telephone services continued to decline, dropping 7.5 percent to 257.4 million kuna (€34 million), while the  number of registered landline users fell by 2 percent, to 1.2 million.

Total revenue from TV services reached 233.3 million kuna (€31 million), up by 4.3 percent compared to Q3 2021. The number of pay television connections increased slightly, by around 4,000, to total 877,000. “The number of fiber-optic cable connections also increased by around 30 percent,” Hina said, without saying how many there are in the country at the moment.

Data traffic over fixed and mobile networks increased by 26 percent year-on-year, and data traffic using broadband connections of 100 Mb/s or higher increased by 34 percent.

(€1 = 7.55 kuna)