Poll Shows 66% of Russian Households Use Mobile Services

MOSCOW, July 18 (Prime-Tass) -- About 66% of Russian households use mobile services, according to a survey conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center, or VCIOM, released this week.

Of the households that use mobile services, 40% have two mobile handsets, 26% have one mobile handset, 21% have three handsets, 10% have four handsets and 3% have more than four handsets, the survey said.

About 34% of households that use mobile services spend less than 300 rubles per month, 33% spend between 301 rubles and 500 rubles, 17% spend between 501 rubles and 1,000 rubles, 10% spend between 1,001 and 3,000 rubles and 1% spend over 3,000 rubles, the survey said.

VCIOM surveyed 1,600 respondents in 153 locations in 46 Russian regions and constituent republics on July 8-9. The margin of error was 3.4%.

Meanwhile, a survey recently carried out by ROMIR Monitoring showed that Russia?s mobile service penetration rate amounted to about 62% in May, up from about 60% in January. The survey was carried out among citizens over 18 years old.

SIM card-based penetration in Russia amounted to 96.6% as of June 30, according to Advanced Communications & Media (AC&M) consultancy. The figure shows the ratio between the number of SIM cards and Russia's total population.

Russia's population stood at 142.5 million people as of May 1, according to the Federal State Statistics Service. About 80% of Russian citizens are over 18 years old, according the Federal Statistics Service's report for 2005. The average household consisted of 2.7 people, according to the latest population census carried out in 2002.

(26.9277 rubles - U.S. $1)

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Posted to the site on 19th July 2006