Telecommunications in Moldova
Because Moldova is a small country, telecommunications companies managed to achieve good coverage in both wired and wireless communications infrastructure.
Landline is available in most settlements, however mobile phone popularity has vastly increased in recent years.
When in 1999 Moldtelecom became a JSC the company began a rapid upgrade process of all of their equipment and installations across the country.
In April 2000 TeliaSonera entered the market with its own network under the brand of Moldcell and thus became the second carrier in the country.
Unlike Internet market the state of the mobile market in the country is very poor, while coverage is not really an issue all carriers practice archaic methods that carriers in many developed countries have long since abolished, general prices are very high compared to other CIS and even EU countries with no change in this segment in many years in fact in some cases the prices have even increased, mobile Internet access is in no better condition with very high prices and very low monthly caps compared to extremely well developed and cheap wired Internet access.
In September 2009 Moldova became the first country in the world to launch high-definition voice services (HD voice) for mobile phones, and the first country in Europe to launch 14.4 Mbit/s mobile broadband at a national scale, with over 40% population coverage.
On November 20, 2012, Orange became the second carrier in the country and first in official Moldova to successfully launch commercial LTE network.
However, despite high speed availability and cheap prices the penetration level is quite low compared to many EU or CIS countries.
As such the only major ISP's in that area are local IDC or Interdnestrcom (Интерднестрком) and LinkService, both operate only on Transnistrian territory.
Internet hosting service Moldova has numerous internet hosting services: Television industry in Moldova began in 1956 with the construction of the country's first dedicated television tower in Chişinău which took a little over a year to complete, the finished tower was 196 meters tall and could broadcast within a 60 km radius.
The first television transmission was sent on 30 April 1958 at 19:00 and included amongst other things cheers from all the parties that participated in the project's development as well as some local celebrities.
EuroCable remained the dominant cable television provider until the mid 1990s when it was bought by SunCommunications which merged it with its own service and re-branded it into SunTV.
Because EuroCable and later SunTV began very early they gathered a large subscription base and remain the dominant cable television provider to this day offering their services in several large towns in the country, although this might soon change as Moldtelecom is rapidly gaining momentum.
During the 2000s many other Chişinău based cable television providers such as Satellit, Delta and Alfa emerged offering similar services as SunTV.
Until recently accessing television was only possible via cable but in 2011 StarNet and Moldtelecom launched their separate IPTV services in Chişinău and other towns offering multiple channels in both SD and HD qualities.
Other principal periodicals include Basarabia (also published by the Writers' Union), Chipăruş, Alunelul, Femeia Moldovei, Lanterna Magică, Moldova, Noi, and SudEst.
Other minority-language periodicals include Prosvita and Homin in Ukrainian, Ana sözu and Cîrlangaci in Gagauz, Rodno slovo in Bulgarian, and Undzer kol/Nash golos in Yiddish and Russian.
