The traffic and incomes coming from the sale of public fixed-line phone services in the first nine months of 2012 decreased, as last year, despite the slight rise in the number of subscribers. The sales of such services in the period diminished by 5.2% compared with the corresponding period last year to about 1.171 billion lei, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to a communiqué from the national ICT regulator, the number of subscribers to fixed-line telephone services in nine months rose by almost 17,800 (+1.5%) to 1.197 million. The rise is exclusively due to the efforts of the 24 alternative operators, which connected about 21,300 new clients to their networks. The subscribers of SA Moldtelecom decreased in number by 3,500. The volume of voice traffic in the fixed-line phone networks over January-September declined by 8.4% on 2011 to 2.289 billion minutes. The voice traffic to fixed-line phone networks and international networks decreased by 9.8% and, respectively, 12.6%, the traffic to mobile networks by 2.4%, while the interconnection traffic by 2.3%. The average monthly minutes of use per user (MoU) fell by 10% to 214 minutes (3 hours and 34 minutes). The revenues from the sale of fixed-line phone services of SA Moldtelecom in the period dropped by 6.3% compared with January-September 2011 to 1.140 billion lei, while the aggregate revenues of the alternative operators increased by 64.9% to about 30.9 million lei. The increase is due to the rise in the number of subscribers to triple play (Internet, TV and fixed-line telephone) services. SA Moldtelecom, which is the largest provider of fixed-line phone services, had a market share of 97.36% by revenues, while the 24 alternative operators – of 2.64% together.