As at the end of March there were 3.3 million direct access fixed telephone service customers in Portugal, a rise of 0.5% over the previous quarter and a rise of 5.4 over the first quarter of 2006. This rise was driven by offers from alternative providers based on GSM technology and bundle offers including fixed telephones, cable TV and/or Internet that have been coming onto the market.
Meanwhile Grupo PT's share of direct access customers, which stood at 73.5% in March, saw a fall of three percentage points compared to the previous quarter and a fall of 13.4 percentage points year-on-year. This fall is a result not only of the new offers of alternative operators, but also of access with SLRO activated.
As far as indirect access through pre-selection is concerned, an 8.9% fall was recorded in the number of customers which stood at 392 thousand, while year-on-year this figure fell by 21.6%. These figures confirm the reversal of the growth trend seen for this time of access, and can be put down to the growing range of direct access offers from alternative operators. New optional pricing plans launched by the incumbent operator and a change in strategy by one of the alternative operators may also have impacted the figures. At the end of March there were around 66 thousand active customers using call-by-call selection, a fall of 3.6% over the previous quarter and of 28.5% compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
The remaining providers continue to enjoy a near 99% share of indirect access, a level that has maintained since the liberalisation of the Fixed Telephone Service.
The total of principal telephone accesses installed at customer request as at the end of the first quarter of this year stood at around 4.1 million, corresponding to a penetration rate of 38.9 accesses per 100 inhabitants, 0.3% down on the previous quarter and 0.6% down on the first quarter of 2006.
At the same time the number of installed public telephones stood at 43 thousand, a fall of 0.4% on the figure recorded for the previous quarter.
The companies of Grupo Portugal Telecom which operate in these markets held a 75.9% of the total access installed at customer request, down 2.3 percentage points on the previous quarter and down 11.5 percentage points on the same quarter of the previous year.
Between January and March, total traffic originating on the fixed network totalled 2.612 billion minutes, resulting from 721 million calls. Compared to the previous quarter the volume of minutes fell by 2.6% and call volume fell by 1.6%. Compared to the same quarter of the previous year, the falls are more pronounced: 9.5% in terms of minutes and 6.9% in terms of calls.
This fall in traffic is in large part due to the sharp decline in dial-up Internet access traffic (down 55.4% in minutes and 48% in calls), impacted by the strong growth in broadband access.
In the first quarter of 2007, 18.5% of all voice minutes had their origin in indirect access, 0.8 percentage points less than the figure recorded for the fourth quarter of 2006 and around 2,6 percentage points less than the figure recorded for the first quarter of 2006.
As at the end of March Grupo PT had a 69.4% share of voice minutes, 0.3 percentage points down on the figure recorded for the previous quarter, and a 69.2% share in terms of calls, 0.4 percentage points down on the figure recorded for the previous quarter.
In the last year, the new providers have increased their shares by around 2.8 percentage points in terms of minutes and 2.7 percentage points in terms of calls.
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