Optical fibre was the technology that contributed most to the increase in fixed broadband accesses in Portugal in the first quarter of the year, with the addition of 50 thousand new accesses, the largest increase on record. At the end of March, 23.1% of fixed broadband accesses were supported by optical fibre.
Leased lines, satellite and LTE at a fixed location reported the second largest increase among access technologies (14.7%), while still only making up a small share of total accesses (4.4%).
ADSL remains the main technology used in fixed broadband Internet access (37.4% of the total), although it was the only technology which saw a decrease in the number of subscribers (-0.5% versus the previous quarter). Cable modem is the second most used technology with 35.1%.
As at the end of March there were 2.9 million fixed broadband Internet accesses in Portugal, while around 93.8% of customers acquired the service as part of a bundle of services.
Grupo PT reported a 47.7% share of fixed accesses, Grupo NOS 35.4% and Cabovisão 5%. Vodafone was the only service provider to increase its share in year-on-year terms (with an increase of 3.5 percentage points), to report a share of 11.3% at the end of the quarter.
Meanwhile, there were around 4.6 million mobile internet users who actually used the service (18.1% more than during the same period of 2014).
In terms of active mobile broadband customers, MEO reported a share of 48.6%, followed by NOS and Vodafone with 27% and 24.1%, respectively. In year-on-year terms, NOS and MEO increased their share by 4.8 and 1.7 percentage points, respectively, while Vodafone saw its share decline by 6.6 percentage points.
Broadband Internet access traffic increased by 20.9% versus 1Q14. This increase is explained by the evolution of fixed broadband traffic (increasing by 20.5%), representing approximately 96.3% of total traffic. Mobile broadband traffic increased by 33.7%.
Average monthly traffic per broadband Internet access at a fixed location was 47.7 GB. Traffic generated by mobile broadband customers with actual use was 1.2 GB per month (6.5 GB per month in the case of cards/modem).
At the end of March, penetration of Internet access services was reported at 27.8 per 100 inhabitants, in the case of fixed access, and at 44.1 per 100 inhabitants in the case of mobile access with actual use. The penetration of the fixed broadband service (residential customers) was reported at 3 out of every 5 private households and 41.1 per 100 conventional dwellings.
Revenues from the fixed Internet access service (stand-alone and bundles of services that include this service), totalled 359.2 million euros in the first quarter of 2015, increasing by 30.3% versus the same period of 2014. Meanwhile, revenues from the mobile Internet access service totalled 74.2 million euros, reflecting a year-on-year decline of 14.7%.
Consult:
- Internet access service - 1st quarter 2015 https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1358434
