At the end of the 2nd quarter of 2007 there were 12.4 million Mobile Telephone Service (MTS) subscribers, a 0.3 per cent increase in the total number of subscribers compared to the previous quarter and a 5.8 per cent increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year. As at the end of the period being reported the penetration rate of this service stood at 117.2 per 100 inhabitants, above the European average of 107.3 per cent.
Prepaid card subscribers represented 78 per cent of all MTS subscribers, falling by 0.9 per cent this quarter. Meanwhile, the service’s growth during this quarter can mainly be put down to an increase in the number of subscription/post-paid plans, whose number of subscribers increased by almost 5 per cent compared to the previous quarter. Although Portugal is one of the countries with the highest proportion of prepaid cards, one can see an increase in the proportion of subscription plans. This trend may be explained by subscribers signing up to new data transmission services based in UMTS and to new post-paid tariff plans.
During the quarter being reported, an increase was recorded for most of the traffic indicators compared both to the first quarter of 2007 and to the second quarter of 2006.
Calls made and received grew by 3.1 and 3 per cent respectively, when compared to the first quarter, and by 5.1 and 4.8 per cent when compared to the second quarter of 2006. Overall the rate of increase in calls in annual terms was slightly lower than the rate at which subscriber numbers grew.
The average time of conversation by subscriber has been increasing, reaching around 89 minutes per month in the second quarter of 2007, 2 minutes more than in the previous quarter.
There was yet another considerable increase in the number of written messages sent over the 2nd quarter of the year, around 4.6 billion messages. This figure gives a 17.6 per cent increase over the previous quarter and of 48.8 per cent over the same quarter of 2006. This is a result of customers signing up to specific tariffs that have been emerging and which include a high number of free messages.
Finally both quarterly and year-on-year rises were seen for roaming traffic.
Consult:
- Postal services https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?categoryId=277884
See also:
- Mobile telephone service has 12,4 million subscribers https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=484897
