At the end of the third quarter of 2008, the total number of main telephone accesses installed at customer request stood at around 4 million, corresponding to a penetration rate of approximately 37.9 accesses per 100 inhabitants. Compared to the previous quarter, there was a slight decrease in the number of accesses (-0.6%). The decline in analogue accesses and reduction in basic, primary and fractioned ISDN accesses was not fully offset by the growth of accesses using other technologies, including GSM, VoIP and cable. Year-on-year the number of accesses installed at customer request saw a fall of 1.3%. It should be mentioned that accesses based on GSM technology increased by 20.2% year-on-year. The exponential growth seen in the number of accesses based on VoIP technology should also be pointed out.
In this quarter the number of installed public payphones stood at approximately 38.9 thousand, a fall of about 3.5% compared to the previous quarter and a fall of 7.9% year-on-year.
In terms of share of accesses, most of the installed accesses continued to belong to companies of the Portugal Telecom Group (Grupo PT) operating in these markets, with 69% of all accesses installed at customer request, 0.4% less than at the end of the previous quarter and 3.6% less than a year earlier.
There were around 3.26 million fixed telephone service customers using direct access, an increase of 0.5% on the previous quarter. This trend was significantly driven by offers from alternative providers 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 using pre-selection, the number of customers continued to decline, falling by 12.1%, to 195 thousand.
With respect to the customers of nomadic VoIP, in September there were around 122 thousand active customers, representing a rise of 6.2% over the previous quarter.
Grupo PT's share of direct access customers fell by 0.3% compared to the previous quarter, to stand at 66.3% by the end of September.
In the indirect access modes, the alternative providers hold a market share of close to 84%.
Total voice traffic originating on the fixed network during the third quarter totalled around 1.961 billion minutes resulting from 642 million calls, figures which translate into falls of 5.3 and 6.1% respectively over the previous quarter.
With regard to traffic associated with the nomadic VoIP service, it can be seen that its weight in respect of total traffic remains in line with the previous quarter, amounting to 3.2% in terms of minutes and 2.1% in terms of calls. Nomadic VoIP totalled around 63.7 million minutes at the end of the quarter, representing a fall of 2.6% compared to the previous quarter.
In the third quarter of 2008, 12.3% of the total voice minutes were originated through indirect access, 0.6 percentage points less than the figure recorded for the previous quarter.
In the quarter being reported, the companies of Grupo PT saw their share of voice traffic continue its downward trend, falling over the previous quarter both in terms of minutes (66.1%, 0.3 points below the previous quarter) and in terms of the number of calls (66.7%, 0.2 points below the previous quarter).
Consult:
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