MOBILE service penetration in Slovakia reached 116 percent at the end of 2011 a 6-percentage-point increase from the end of 2010. As of December 31, 2011, the three Slovak mobile operators – Orange Slovensko, Slovak Telekom and Telefónica Slovakia (O2) – had a total of over 6.3 million active SIM cards, a net year-on-year increase of 305,000, the SITA newswire wrote.
As of December 31, Orange had 2.94 million active SIM cards, both pre-paid and post-paid. Telekom had 2.197 million and O2 1.164 million active SIM cards. The number of O2 clients rose by 284,000 y-o-y and the number of active Orange clients by 70,000. On the other hand, the number of active Telekom SIM cards dropped by 49,000. These numbers also included data from branded resellers using the services provided by the three operators. These include Naymobile, Swan Mobile, Tesco Mobile, Mphone and FunFón.
Data on mobile penetration is calculated based on the number of SIM cards used by customers with accounts plus those individuals using prepayment cards who had used their phone at least once in the previous three months. According to the statistics, 100 percent would equal the number of Slovak citizens – 5.44 million.
SIM cards are used for various purposes aside from mobile phones – for instance, operating GSM gates, e-tolls, localising services, alarms, CCTVs and more – meaning that the number of active users can exceed the population.
