Executive Summary
Number of customers increased by 1.2% in 2023
In 2023, the number of direct access fixed telephone service customers was approximately 4.5 million, 54 thousand (+1.2%) more than in 2022. The observed growth is in line with the estimated historical trend and is related to the continued penetration of bundled offers that include the fixed telephone service.
Next generation networks responsible for access growth
The number of main telephone accesses totalled 5.5 million equivalent accesses, 67 thousand more than in the previous year. The growth (1.2%) was due to the increase in accesses supported by fibre optic and cable TV networks.
In 2023, accesses supported by next generation networks (FTTH, cable TV networks and mobile networks at a fixed location) accounted for 92.1% of telephone accesses, increasing their weight by 2.2 p.p. compared to the previous year. On the other hand, the number of analogue accesses decreased by 26.7% compared to 2022, representing 4.6% of total accesses.
Almost half of households with FTS did not use the service
In 2023, the penetration rate of main telephone accesses was 52.6 accesses per 100 inhabitants. The penetration rate of accesses installed at the request of residential customers reached 97.6 per 100 private households, 1.1 percentage points (p.p.) more than last year.
However, in 2023, according to the INE’s Survey on the Use of Information and Communication Technologies by Households, around 48.6% of households with FTS declared that they did not use the service.
Number of public payphones down by 21.7% in 2023
The number of public payphones installed was around 10 thousand, a decrease of 21.7% compared to 2022.
Traffic in minutes originating from public payphones has also decreased (-24.0% compared to 2022). Since 2016, this type of traffic has decreased by 80.5%. This downward trend is explained by the replacement of this type of traffic by mobile phone calls and other forms of Internet-based communication.
Traffic originating from the fixed network decreased by 16.2%
The volume of minutes originated in the fixed network decreased by 16.2% compared to last year.
In 2023, the COVID-19 pandemic no longer had a significant impact on the average traffic per FTS access, which returned to the downward trend observed before the pandemic and to the levels estimated in the absence of the pandemic.
In terms of call types, the decrease was mainly due to a reduction in fixed-to-fixed traffic (-18.6%) and, to a lesser extent, to the reduction in fixed-to-mobile traffic (-2.4%), in national traffic to short numbers and non-geographic numbers (-30.7%) and in outgoing international traffic (-20.8%).
Monthly traffic per access fell by 8 minutes
In 2023, on average 39 minutes per access per month were used, of which 27 minutes were for fixed-to-fixed calls, 8 minutes for fixed-to-mobile calls and 2 minutes for international calls. Compared to 2022, 8 minutes less were used per access per month (-17.7%).
Provider shares
At the end of 2023, MEO’s share of direct access customers was 41.7%, followed by Grupo NOS with 34.1%, Vodafone with 20.9% and NOWO with 2.5%. Grupo NOS and NOWO’s share of direct access customers decreased by 0.2 p.p., MEO’s share remained constant and Vodafone’s share increased by 0.4 p.p.. The degree of concentration decreased slightly.
