Mobile phones outnumber people in Cyprus

The number of landlines decreased last year by 27,474 over 2022, close to 10 per cent, while the number of mobiles increased by 4.4 per cent during the same period, according to data released on Friday showing there are more mobile phones than people in Cyprus.

Data issued by the Office of the Commissioner for the Regulation of Electronic Communications and Post showed that at the end of 2022, there were 297,382 fixed telephony lines still operating in Cyprus, but the number is falling. In 2021 there were 309,000.

Around 65 per cent of landlines now use fiber-optic networks. The data shows that telecommunications company Cyta still holds the majority share of the landline market with over 56 per cent. This has fallen, however, from a 62.7 per cent share in 2020.

Cablenet is its biggest competitor now holding 23.8 per cent of the market compared with 15.5 per cent in 2020. Primetel and Epic have remained relatively steady, hovering around 10 per cent each.

The mobile phone market figures show that in total, there are 1.43 million devices in circulation, up 4.4 per cent, or 17,647 new users compared with 2022. Just over one million are on a contract basis and some 428,000 are prepaid users. This number is slightly down. Market penetration of mobile phones is 156 per cent, which means there are more mobile phones in Cyrus than people.

Contracts with unlimited data, voice calls and SMS make up 53.77 per cent of subscriptions. This percentage is expected to continue to increase, the report said.

As far as contract subscribers are concerned, it added, a slight decrease was observed for Cyta, Epic and Primetel, while Cablenet, showed growth reaching double-digits (10 per cent) for the first time. For prepaid, the company showed an increase of 4.9 per cent in 2023.

Cyta still holds the mobile market, however, with a 51.8 per cent share, followed by Epic with 23.9 per cent and Primetel 8.8 per cent but now surpassed by Cablenet’s sudden rise to 10.1 per cent.

On the internet side of things, the number of fixed broadband subscribers showed a small increase over 2022 of 2.2 per cent or 7,676 new subscribers. People are also subscribing to higher speeds due to the expansion of the fiber-optic networks, and free upgrades to strong competition on the market, the report noted.