The number of main telephone accesses reached almost 5 million accesses at the end of the first half of 2018, 4.3% more than in the same period in the previous year. The growth recorded (+208,000 accesses) was mainly due to the increase in VoIP/VoB accesses (+445,000 accesses), which includes access supported on optical fibre and cable TV networks. At the end of June, access supported on networks other than the traditional network (analogue and ISDN accesses) accounted for 67.7% of the main telephone accesses.
As for the penetration rate, at the end of June accesses installed at the request of residential customers amounted to 88.4 per 100 standard households.
Regarding the access mode, in the first half of 2018 the number of fixed telephone service customers with direct access was around 3.99 million, an increase of 2% compared to the same period last year. This growth is associated with the growing popularity of package deals that include fixed telephony - about 91.5% of fixed service customers had purchased this service within a package, +1.6 percentage points than in the first half of 2017.
In terms of traffic, the volume of minutes starting in the fixed network decreased by 7.5% in relation to the first half of the previous year, maintaining the downward trend that began in early 2013. The decline in traffic is associated with the increased penetration of "4P/5P" packages, which include mobile services with free calls to all networks, and the growing penetration of Over-the-top (OTT) services.
It should also be noted that 86 minutes per access were consumed on average per month: 61 minutes in fixed-to-fixed calls, 8 minutes in fixed-mobile calls and 4 minutes in international calls.
At the end of this period, MEO accounted for 42.4% of the service customers. The NOS Group's share was 37%. Vodafone was the provider with the third largest share of direct access customers (16.5%).
Consult the statistical report:
- Fixed telephone service - 1st half 2018 https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1463680
