At the end of 2021, the non-residential electronic communications market had 1.3 million fixed telephone accesses, 668 thousand fixed Internet accesses, 568 thousand high-speed network customers and 471 thousand subscription TV accesses. There were 79 providers present in this market, of which 49 providers were operating in this segment exclusively.
There are three undertakings of significant size present in the non-residential electronic communications market in Portugal: MEO, Grupo NOS and Vodafone. In addition to these three undertakings, there were more than 74 smaller undertakings offering retail electronic communications services in the non-residential segment. These operated in geographic segments or offered specific services, and 49 of these operated exclusively in this segment, including Onitelecom, Dialoga, BLU, AR Telecom, Colt Telecom and Vonage.
Among the main providers of electronic communications services, MEO reported the highest share of non-residential fixed voice subscribers (54.1% of subscribers), fixed Internet (49.7% of subscribers), subscription television (52.7% of subscribers), mobile telephone service (38.5% of subscribers) and offers sold in bundles (50.1% of subscribers). Grupo NOS reported the second highest share in subscription television (29.3%) and in the fixed telephone service (24.6%) and the third largest share in the mobile telephone service (23.6%) and in fixed broadband (22.2%). Vodafone was the second largest provider of the mobile telephone service (37.2%) and fixed broadband (26.5%) and the third largest provider of the fixed telephone service (17.4%) and subscription television (16.5%).
Standardised non-residential commercial offers are similar to residential offers Among the non-residential offers covered, the maximum download speed of the fixed broadband service was 10 Gbps, which is higher than the maximum speed currently offered in the residential segment (1 Gbps). However, the characteristics of most non-residential commercial offers are similar to those of residential offers.
At the end of the 1st half of 2021, non-residential subscribers of the main electronic communications services represented 27.4% of total subscribers, while residential subscribers represented 72.6%.
By service, non-residential users made up around a quarter of accesses to the fixed telephone service, as well as 15.5% of users of the Internet access service at a fixed location, 10.8% of total subscription television subscribers, 19.5% of mobile Internet accesses and 18% of mobile accesses with actual use.
Non-residential high-speed network customers represented 14.7% of total customers, while subscribers to non-residential bundled services represented 12.5% of total subscribers to bundled services.
The weight of other services in the non-residential segment was greater than in the residential segment (e.g., mobile Internet access via PC/tablet/pen/router (50.8%) and M2M - Machine-to-Machine accesses (99.6%)).
According to the European Commission, based on the sample survey Information and Communication Technologies in Enterprises, in Portugal, Internet penetration among micro-enterprises was reported at 84% while penetration among small enterprises was 96%. Almost all medium and large companies had access to the Internet, while among companies with 10 or more employees, fixed broadband penetration was 95% (1 percentage point above the EU27 average).
Fixed broadband penetration in Portugal was above the EU27 average for almost all business sizes and in most sectors of activity. In terms of mobile broadband, around 69% of companies with 10 or more employees had this service, below the European average (72%).
The proportion of non-residential users of the main electronic communications services varies by geographic location. In absolute terms, the number of non-residential users is greater along the northern and central coast of Portugal. However, geographic dispersion is quite different in terms of users as a proportion of the total, given the demography and the number of companies existing in each municipality.
With regard to fixed telephone service accesses, at the end of 2021, around one in four municipalities in Portugal (44 out of 308) had a proportion of non-residential fixed telephone users that was above the national average.
If Internet access service accesses are considered, 177 municipalities (out of 308) recorded a proportion of non-residential accesses above the national average. Considering high-speed network customers, this figure increases to 194 municipalities.
In 2021, except for the use of artificial intelligence technologies, digital intensity among Portuguese companies was below the EU average. Around 62% of Portuguese companies with 10 or more employees had their own website (16 percentage points less than the EU27 average), 59% of companies used digital communications as a strategy to connect with customers, suppliers or business partners (1 percentage point below the EU27 average), 35% of companies purchased cloud computing services (7 percentage points below the EU27 average) and around 10% of companies reported analysing big data (3 percentage points below the EU27 average), 23% of companies used Internet of Things devices (Internet of Things - IoT), i.e. interconnected devices or systems that can be monitored or controlled remotely via the Internet (6 percentage points below the EU27 average). On the other hand, in the use of artificial intelligence technologies, Portugal was 2nd in the EU27 rankings (17%), surpassed only by Denmark.
About 1 in 5 Portuguese companies with 10 or more employees registered a “high” or “very high” digital intensity index. Portugal was 1 percentage point below the EU27 average.
In 2021, the relative growth in the number of users in the non-residential segment was higher than in the residential segment for the principal fixed services. The number of non-residential fixed telephone service accesses (1.3 million) increased by 3% over the previous year (versus 1.8% in the case of residential accesses); the number of Internet access service accesses at a fixed location (668 thousand) increased by 4.4% (versus 3.6% in the case of residential accesses) and subscription television accesses (471 thousand) increased by 5.4% (versus 2.7% in the case of residential accesses). Non-residential customers of high-speed services (568 thousand) increased by 11.4% in 2021 (versus 8.1% in the case of residential customers).
There was also an increase in the use of more advanced services by companies, although to a lesser extent compared to the last 5 years. The number of data transmission service customers increased by 5% compared to the previous year and the number of high-quality accesses leased to retail customers increased by 3.8%.
In the 1st half of 2021, around 79% of non-residential Internet accesses from the four main providers had download speeds equal to or greater than 30 Mbps, while 71% of accesses provided speeds of at least 100 Mbps. These percentages for non-residential Internet accesses were lower than for residential accesses with these speeds (93% and 86%, respectively). Around 5% of all non-residential accesses had speeds equal to or greater than 1 Gbps.
Meanwhile, in terms of fixed voice traffic, the number of minutes generated by non-residential customers of the fixed voice service in the 1st half of 2021 represented 40.5% of the total, corresponding, on average, to 54 minutes per month per user (3 minutes more than for residential customers) and to 2 minutes and 37 seconds per call (versus 6 minutes and 17 seconds in the residential segment).
A quarter of mobile voice traffic was generated by non-residential customers (23.1% of minutes and 26.6% of calls) resulting in average monthly voice traffic per mobile access of 308 minutes (83 minutes more than for residential customers) and an average duration per call of 3 minutes (versus 3.6 minutes recorded by residential customers).
Mobile internet traffic generated by mobile accesses from non-residential customers represented 24.1% of total mobile Internet traffic (17.8% in terms of mobile-only traffic and 37.3% in terms of traffic via PC/tablet/pen/router). Each non-residential customer mobile access generated an average of 6.3 GB of Internet traffic, while accesses by residential customers generated an average of 4.8 GB.
Customers of data transmission services supported over other technologies (Frame Relay, IP MPLS, Ethernet, etc.), tending to be larger companies, recorded average monthly traffic of 1.3 TB in 2021, 27.4% more than in the previous year.
Between January and June 2021, retail revenues obtained from non-residential customers of the main electronic communications services totalled 430 million euros, representing around 25% of total revenues derived from services provided to end customers.
Almost half of revenues derived from non-residential customers came from mobile services (45% of total revenues), followed by revenues from bundled services (27%) and revenues from standalone fixed services (26%). In the residential segment, there was a significant difference in this distribution (32%, 58% and 9% respectively).
In terms of average revenue per user, in the case of bundled services, average revenue generated per non-residential user was higher than the average revenue generated per residential user (35.9 euros/month versus 34.1 euros/month).
With regard to distribution of retail revenues among providers, MEO reported the highest percentage of revenues from non-residential customers derived from the principal electronic communications services (39.5%), followed by Vodafone (34.1%), Grupo NOS (26.2%) and NOWO (0.2%). By type of service, MEO recorded the highest percentage of non-residential revenues in relation to fixed services (49.6%) and bundled services (49.4%), and Vodafone reported the highest percentage of non-residential revenues in relation to mobile services (47.3%).
Consult the statistical report:
- Serviços de comunicações eletrónicas - segmento não residencial 2021 https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1726634
