Optical fibre surpasses cable as the main means of Internet access in Portugal


At the end of first quarter 2017, there were around 3.42 million Internet accesses at a fixed location in Portugal, 44 thousand more accesses than in the previous quarter. Optical fibre overtook cable modem as the main means of fixed broadband Internet access, accounting for 34% of accesses versus 33.2% of accesses supported by cable.

The remaining fixed broadband Internet accesses were supported by ADSL (25.2%) and LTE at a fixed location (7.5%).

Optical fibre is the technology which has contributed most to the growth reported in the number of accesses, with gains exceeding 50 thousand accesses per quarter since the beginning of 2015.

In the period being reported, the number of users who actually used mobile broadband Internet rose to 6.5 million, 0.3% more than in the previous quarter and 17.3% more than in 1st quarter 2016.

In terms of fixed accesses, MEO retained the largest share: 40.1% of accesses (shrinking 3 percentage points from 1st quarter 2016). Grupo NOS reported a share of 37.7% (+0.8 percentage points versus 1st quarter 2016) and Vodafone 17.7% (the operator whose share grew most: 2.2 percentage points). Grupo Apax, which owns Nowo and ONI, maintained its share of 4.2%.

In the case of mobile broadband, MEO reported a 38.9% share of active customers, followed by NOS with 32.7% and Vodafone with 27.4%. Nowo, which launched commercial offers of the mobile broadband service in April 2016, reported a share of 0.8%.

Average monthly traffic per fixed broadband Internet access was reported at 63.4 GB. In the case of mobile broadband with actual use, customer-generated traffic totalled 2.06 GB per month (10.4 GB per month in the case of tablet/PC traffic).

In the first quarter, revenues from the stand-alone fixed Internet access service and from bundles including this service were reported at 445.1 million euros (increasing 6.8% from 1st quarter 2016). Mobile Internet accesses generated revenues of 86.8 million euros in 1st quarter 2017, increasing 6.4% versus 1st quarter 2016.

Infographic about Internet access service

Infographic about Internet access service - fixed Internet

Infographic about Internet access service (cont.)

Infographic about Internet access service - mobile Internet


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