At the end of June 2009, there were around 2.95 million mobile broadband Internet users in Portugal and around 1.79 million customers with fixed Internet access, of which approximately 1.75 million were broadband.
Mobile broadband saw a high rate of growth with the number of users increasing by 254 thousand, representing a rise of around 9.4 per cent compared to the previous quarter and a rise of 54 per cent when compared to second quarter of 2008.
The number of mobile broadband users who were active during the period being reported grew by around 9 per cent over the quarter, rising to 1.45 million users, a figure that is 63.8 per cent higher than the value recorded in the second quarter of 2008. This number of active users represents around 50% of the total number of users who have mobile connections, a proportion which has been rising systematically since January 2007, when it was approximately 35 per cent.
Meanwhile, the number of fixed internet access service customers (around 1.79 million) grew by around 3 per cent in 2Q09 compared to the previous quarter and by 10 per cent year-on-year.
The number of dial-up access customers continued to decline, as a result of the migration of users to broadband, with around 1.5 thousand fewer users than in the previous quarter.
The majority of fixed Internet access service customers use broadband, representing around 98 per cent of all customers. The number of customers of broadband services reached 1.79 million, around 54 thousand more than in the previous quarter. The number of fixed broadband customers rose, therefore, by 3.2 per cent in comparison to the previous quarter. Meanwhile, year-on-year, the number of broadband customers rose by 11.7 per cent.
As in the previous quarter, growth can be explained in the most part by the commercial activities of Grupo PT, Grupo ZON and Vodafone.
ADSL remains the principal broadband Internet access technology, now representing 58 per cent of the total, 4 percentage points below the peak seen in December 2006. Cable modem is used by 40.4 per cent of fixed broadband customers.
The “others” category, which includes, for example, offers based on leased lines, on FWA and on optical fibre, and which represents 1.8 per cent of the total number of customers, has seen sharp growth, of more than 14 per cent, due in the most part to bundled offers based on alternative networks.
As far as market share of fixed broadband access is concerned, Grupo PT’s share of customers was reported at 42.8 per cent, 0.3 per cent up on the previous quarter. Grupo ZON’s share of customers increased by 0.7 percentage points over the same period to total 32.3 percent, while Vodafone Portugal increased its share from 3.2 to 3.5 percent. Meanwhile Sonaecom and Cabovisão both saw their share of customers decline.
The data further shows that on a net basis certain operators gained customers while other operators lost customers. As such, among the operators reporting the greatest absolute gain in customers, note is made of the ZON group, the PT group and Vodafone, with gains of 33.2 mil, 28.7 mil and 6.6 thousand customers, respectively. Meanwhile Sonaecom and Cabovisão lost the most customers in absolute terms during this period (7.8 thousand and 2.2 thousand, respectively).
When Grupo PT is compared with the figures reported for the set of alternative operators (including Grupo ZON), it can be seen that Grupo PT had a marginal share of 53 per cent.
Meanwhile, broadband Internet access traffic grew by around 11 per cent over the quarter. This can be explained above all by the trends seen in fixed broadband traffic (+11.5 per cent), which represented around 95.8 per cent of the total. The growth rate of fixed traffic is almost 3.6 times the growth seen in the number of customers, driven in the most part by the activity of Grupo ZON/TV Cabo (with 44.7 per cent share), and of Grupo PT (with 32.8 per cent share).
At the same time, Internet access traffic from mobile connections (in GB) grew by 3.1 per cent compared to the previous quarter, with the number of active customers growing by 9 per cent.
At the end of June, the penetration rate of broadband Internet access stood at 16.5 per 100 inhabitants for fixed access and at 27.7 per 100 inhabitants for mobile access. In the case of fixed access, this figure increased 0.5 percentage points over the previous quarter, being around 1.7 per cent higher than the figure recorded for the second quarter of 2008. The penetration rate for mobile broadband grew by 2.4 percentage points over the quarter.
Consult:
- Postal services https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?categoryId=277884
