As at the end of June there were 4.64 million fixed telephone lines in Portugal, the highest number reported since 2006. For several years, the number of installed fixed lines had been falling, reaching the lowest level in 2008/9. With the expansion of bundled offers which include the fixed service this decline was reversed, with a peak reported in June. Nevertheless, traffic continues to fall as a result of increased penetration of bundles that also include mobile services.
In fact, in the 2nd quarter of this year, the volume of minutes of the fixed telephone service voice dropped 4.7% compared to the previous quarter and by 14.4% year-on-year.
The growth of 2% reported in the number of fixed lines stems partly from accesses supported over optical fibre, cable and GSM/UMTS/LTE networks, so that, for the first time in Portugal, alternative networks to the traditional copper network account for more than half of the country's fixed telephone accesses.
Grupo Altice (including MEO and also still including Cabovisão and Oni) had 56.6% of total installed lines. Grupo NOS was the second largest provider and the provider to report most growth, increasing its share to 31.9%. Vodafone reported a share of 11.1%.
In terms of generated traffic (1.66 billion minutes and 445 million calls), Grupo Altice reported the largest share (52.7%), followed by NOS (33.9%) and Vodafone (11%).
The data also shows that each main access consumed an average of 94 minutes per month in fixed-fixed calls (5 minutes fewer than in the previous quarter), 9 minutes in fixed-mobile calls (1 minute fewer than in the previous quarter) and 8 minutes in international calls (1 minute fewer than in the previous quarter).
There were about 22 thousand public pay-telephones reported in the period, 1.4% fewer than in the previous quarter and 3.7% fewer versus 2Q14.
In the same period, total revenue from the fixed telephone service and bundles which include the fixed telephone service totalled 905 million euros.
Consult the statistical report:
- Fixed telephone service - 2nd quarter 2015 https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1368465
