At the end of 2006, the total number of main telephone accesses installed at customer request stood at 4.1 million. This figure corresponds to a penetration rate of approximately 39 accesses per 100 inhabitants.
Compared to the previous quarter, there was a slight increase in the number of accesses (0.3%). The drop in the number of analogue accesses and basic ISDN accesses was more than outweighed by the growth of other accesses using GSM technology (included in ''Other''). Year-on-year this indicator remains little changed.
The companies of the Portugal Telecom Group held about 78.1% of all accesses installed at customer request, 3.1% less than at the end of the previous quarter and 10.9% less than a year earlier.
As at the end of December, there were around 3.2 million fixed telephone service customers using direct access, a 2.2% increase on the previous quarter and a 3.6% rise on the same quarter of 2005. This increase was driven by new offers based on GSM technology and the offers bundling fixed telephone and cable television and/or Internet that have been appearing in the market.
On the other hand, the number of indirect access customers using pre-selection fell by 3.2%, to 430 thousand. Compared to the same period one year before, the number of pre-selection customers fell by 8.5%. This trend can be attributed to the growing number of direct access offers from the alternative operators.
As of the end of 2006, over 142 thousand customers have benefited from the SLRO. In comparison to the previous quarter, the number of customers with a 'single bill' increased by around 51 thousand.
PT Group's share of direct access customers fell by 3.7% compared to the previous quarter, and by 12.4% compared to a year earlier, to stand at 76.5% by the end of the quarter. This fall is a result, not only of the new offers of the alternative providers, but also of accesses with the SLRO activated.
In the indirect access modes, the remaining providers continue to hold a market share close to 99%.
Traffic originating on the fixed network during the fourth quarter totalled around 2.22 billion minutes resulting from 733 million calls. Although these figures are up on the previous quarter (the number of minutes grew by 3.5% while the number of calls grew by 2.4%), the figure is significantly lower than that recorded the year before, especially in terms of the number of minutes - 11.6%. The number of calls fell by 8.5% over the same period.
This annual fall in traffic has been heavily impacted by the sharp fall in traffic resulting from dial-up internet access (down 47% in terms of minutes and down 38% in terms of calls) in the face of the strong expansion of internet access using broadband technologies. However, a decrease can also be seen in voice traffic when compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
Voice traffic originating on the fixed network accounted for around 2.036 billion minutes from 772 million calls, representing respective increases of 5.5% and 2.6% on the previous quarter.
In the final quarter of 2006, 19.3% of the total number of voice minutes were through indirect access, 0.9% less than recorded for the previous quarter and around 1.1% less than that recorded for the final quarter of 2005.
Year-on-year, the proportion of total traffic accounted for by indirect access rose by 0.3%.
Indirect access accounted for 20.7% of the total number of voice calls made during the quarter. This leads to a year-on-year increase in the share of indirect access in the total number of calls of 0.7 percent.
The companies of PT Group saw their share of voice traffic continue its downward trend, both in terms of minutes (69.7%, 0.9% less than in the previous quarter) and in terms of the number of calls (69.%, 1.1% less than in the previous quarter).
In the last year, the new providers have seen their share rise by around 3.2% in terms of minutes and 3.4% in terms of calls.
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