As at the end of 2nd quarter 2015, 9 out of 10 Internet users in Portugal used Internet accesses of over 20 Mbps. More than half of users (56.7%) had accesses above 30 Mbps and 25.5% had accesses exceeding 100 Mbps.
In the same period, broadband Internet access traffic increased by 2.9%, mainly due to an increase of 2.8% in fixed broadband traffic, which accounts for about 96.1% of the 443.8 million gigabytes (GB) of traffic generated during the quarter. Mobile broadband traffic increased by 6.1% in the same period: traffic generated by cards/modems grew by 4.1% and traffic generated through smartphones increased 10.6%.
In absolute terms, there were 3 million fixed Internet accesses in Portugal (2.3% more than in the previous quarter). Compared to the same quarter of 2014 the number of fixed Internet access has increased by 11.6%.
ADSL remains the main technology used for fixed broadband Internet access (35.6% of the total) - very close to cable modem (34.5%) - although it was the only technology which saw a decrease in the number of subscribers (-1.5% versus the previous quarter). Internet over optical fibre - FTTH/FTTB - already accounts for 24.1% of accesses.
The largest contribution to the growth reported in the number of accesses is from optical fibre - FTTH/FTTB (increasing by 7.5% over the quarter and by 35.3% year-on-year). In absolute terms, the increases reported in the number of FTTH/FTTB access in the last two quarters were the largest ever, with about 50 thousand new accesses added each quarter.
Likewise, the quarter also saw notable growth (10.2%) in "other forms" of access (leased lines, satellite, LTE at a fixed location); despite the low weight as a proportion of total accesses (5.9%), these accesses made the second largest contribution to the growth in the overall number of accesses.
There were 4.8 million users in Portugal who actually used Internet mobile broadband (an increase of 3.8% over the previous quarter and 22% year-on-year). The evolution in mobile broadband has mainly been driven by the increasing number of smartphone users, who already represent 62.2% of all mobile users (an increase of 16.3 percentage points over 2Q14).
In terms of market share, Grupo Altice (including MEO and also still including Cabovisão and Oni) reported a 51% share of fixed accesses, followed by Grupo NOS with a share of 35.5%, and Vodafone with 13.2%. Vodafone was the operator reporting the highest growth this quarter. In terms of broadband traffic, the customers of Grupo Altice accounted for 47.7% of generated traffic, NOS 43.3% of traffic and Vodafone 8.1%
In terms of active mobile broadband customers, MEO leads with a 48.3% share of customers, followed by NOS with 29% and Vodafone with 22.4%. In year-on-year terms, NOS and MEO increased their shares by 6.2 and 0.1 percentage points, respectively, while Vodafone's share fell 6.3 percentage points.
In terms of mobile Internet traffic, there is less asymmetry in the distribution of market share: NOS has the largest share with 37.6%, followed by Vodafone and MEO with 32.1% and 30.3% respectively.
Revenues from the fixed Internet access service (stand-alone and bundles of services which include fixed Internet access) were reported at around 742.1 million euros in the first six months of the year. In the same period, revenues from the mobile Internet access service totalled 150.3 million euros.
Consult the statistical report:
- Internet access service - 2nd quarter 2015 https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1366564
