The total number of main telephone accesses installed at customer request stood at 4.07 million at the end of the September, corresponding to a penetration rate of approximately 38.4 accesses per 100 inhabitants, and giving a slight decrease over the previous quarter (-0.6%).
Year-on-year the number of accesses installed at customer request saw a fall of 1.1%.
In the third quarter the number of installed public payphones stood at approximately 42.2 thousand, a fall of about 1% compared to the previous quarter and a fall of 4.1% year-on-year.
In terms of share of accesses, the Portugal Telecom Group held about 72.8% of all accesses installed at customer request, 1.4% less than at the end of the previous quarter and 8.4% less than a year earlier.
There were around 3.23 million fixed telephone service customers using direct access, a slight decrease of 0.6% on the previous quarter but a 1.7% rise on the same quarter of 2006. This trend was driven by new offers based on GSM technology and the packaged offers of fixed telephone and cable television and/or Internet that have been appearing in the market.
Regarding indirect access through pre-selection, the number of customers fell by 7.7%, to 352 thousand. It should be pointed out that this result confirms the reversal in the growth trend seen for this type of access; compared to the same period of the previous year, the number of pre-selection customers fell by 20.7%. This trend is explained by the new providers focusing on other business models with prospects of higher return and by new tariffs of the incumbent operator.
PT Group's share of direct access customers fell by 1.8% compared to the previous quarter and by 10.4% compared to a year earlier, to stand at 69.8% in September. This fall is a result, not only of the new offers of the alternative providers, but also of accesses with the SLRO activated.
Among the alternative operators, Novis has a 15.2% share, Cabovisão has a 7.5% share, and Tele 2 5.6%. The share divided by the remaining operators stands at 1.9%.
Total traffic originating on the fixed network during the third quarter totalled around 1,987 billion minutes resulting from 675 million calls. Compared to the previous quarter, the number of minutes fell by 6% while the number of calls fell by 5.1%. Meanwhile compared to the figures recorded the year before, the number of minutes fell by 7.4% and the number of calls fell by 5.7%.
As far as traffic in minutes is concerned, this decline in traffic in comparison to the third quarter of 2006 can be explained by the sharp fall in dial-up internet access traffic (down 59.3%). Meanwhile, in terms of calls, the year-on-year fall in total traffic is in the most part explained by a fall seen in national fixed-fixed traffic (-7.0%), as a consequence of its relative weight in total traffic.
In the third quarter of 2007, 15.5% of the total number of voice minutes were through indirect access, 1.5% less than recorded for the previous quarter and around 4.7% less than that recorded for the third quarter of 2006.
In the quarter being reported, the companies of PT Group saw their share of voice traffic continue its downward trend, both in terms of minutes (69.1% in 3Q2007, 0.2% less than in the previous quarter) and in terms of the number of calls (68.6% 3Q2007, 0.1% less than in the previous quarter).
Consult:
- Postal services https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?categoryId=277884
