Mobile Internet traffic in Portugal increased by 35.7% in 3rd quarter 2015, with traffic generated by cards/modem increasing by 26.9% and traffic generated by mobile phones increasing by 55.1%. The number of users who actually used mobile broadband to access the Internet increased by 4.1% over the previous quarter and by 22.6% over the same quarter of 2014, rising to 5.5 million users.
The growth in mobile broadband has mainly been driven by an increase in the number of smartphones, which by this quarter were used by 64.2% of all mobile users (an annual increase of 14.5 percentage points).
As regards provider shares of active mobile broadband customers, MEO reported a 43% share of customers, followed by Vodafone with 29.2% and NOS with 27.5%. In year-on-year terms, NOS and Vodafone increased their shares of customers by 3.9 and 0.9 percentage points, respectively, while MEO's share fell by 4.8 percentage points.
In terms of traffic, MEO reported the largest share with 34.7%, followed by NOS with 33.5% and Vodafone with 31.8%. MEO was the only provider to increase its share during the period being reported.
In total, broadband Internet access traffic (fixed and mobile) increased 10.1% in the 3rd quarter. This trend is mainly due to an increase of 9.1% in fixed broadband traffic, which represents 95.2% of the total.
There were 3.07 million fixed broadband accesses at the end of September, increasing 11% versus September 2014. This increase is largely due to growth in optical fibre - which grew by 7.1% over the quarter and 34.2% in year-on-year terms - to represent 25.2% of total accesses.
The increased use of broadband (fixed and mobile) results, to a large extent, from the success of bundled services - the number of subscribers to bundles of services increased by over 11% during the period being reported. In the case of fixed broadband, it is estimated that about 94.4% of the service's customers have acquired the service as part of a bundle. In the same period, 63 out of every 100 households had fixed broadband.
MEO's share of fixed accesses was reported at 45%, followed by Grupo NOS with a share of 36% and Vodafone with 14%. In year-on-year terms, Vodafone and Grupo NOS increased their shares by 3.7 and 1.4 percentage points, respectively, while MEO saw a decline of 3.9 percentage points over the same period.
With respect to traffic, MEO reported a 44.2% share of fixed broadband traffic, NOS reported a 41.4% share and Vodafone 8.1%.
Revenues from the fixed Internet access service (stand-alone and from bundles of services which include this service) amounted to about 1.1184 billion euros in the first nine months of 2015. Revenues from triple-play, quadruple-play and quintuple-play bundles represent 87.6% of the total.
Consult the statistical report:
- Internet access service - 3rd quarter 2015 https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1374886
