At the end of September there were around 16.14 million active mobile stations associated with post-paid, prepaid and combined /hybrid tariff plans, a 1.7 percent increase over the previous quarter. Of these, about 81.8 percent (13, 205 million) were actually used in the last month of the quarter, 0.2 percentage points less than in the previous quarter of 2010.
During the period under review, post-paid plans accounted for 15.9 percent of the total plans (within the post-paid, 24.6 percent have no actual use, which could be associated with the cards/modems that are reported under this category), prepaid plans represent around 71.9 percent of the total and combined / hybrid plans around 12.2 percent.
If cards/modems used exclusively for broadband Internet access are excluded from the total of mobile stations, the number of active mobile stations of active user devices and actual use rose to around 11.9 million, 217 thousand more than in the previous quarter.
In the third quarter, the penetration of the mobile service was reported at 151.7 per 100 inhabitants. The interpretation of the figures for the number of subscribers and penetration of the land mobile services should take into account that there are users who have more than one service access card. According to the most recent Electronic Communications Services Consumer Survey conducted by ICP - ANACOM, around 10 percent of consumers of this service have more than one active card.
During the period under review, the number of users eligible to use broadband services surpassed 10.1 million.
The number of active users and who actually used services characteristic of 3rd generation (video-telephony, broadband data transmission, mobile TV, etc), reached about 3.6 million, down 4 percent from the previous quarter.
Eligible users of broadband services (UMTS / HSPA) represented 63 percent of all active mobile stations, while active users represented 27.3 percent of all mobile stations in actual use.
Of the total users of broadband services who recorded traffic in the last reporting month, about 34.8 percent are users of broadband Internet access services through cards / modems.
During the third quarter, around 2.26 billion calls were made, an increase of 4.6 percent over the previous quarter. This period is usually marked by a seasonal increase in traffic. The growth was influenced mostly by the growth reported in on-net calls and on international calls (summer holiday period).
Compared to the third quarter of 2009, a rise of 6.6 percent is reported in the number of calls, significantly exceeding the increase reported in the number of active mobile stations Likewise in this case, the greatest contribution to the growth reported was seen in on-net traffic. Other types of calls saw declines.
In the same period, the number of calls received on mobile network was 2.19 billion, representing an increase of 4.3 percent over the previous quarter, and a 4.1 percent increase over the same period last year.
The fixed-mobile traffic continues to decline, registering an annual reduction of 12.7 percent. An average of 63 calls per month was reported per active mobile station in actual use, excluding cards used for mobile broadband Internet access. About 44 of the calls were made to the same service provider (two more compared to the previous quarter) and 11 to other provider of the same service.
The duration of calls originated on mobile networks amounted to around 5.3 billion, an increase of 8.7 percent over the previous quarter, and an increase of 14.8 percent over the same period in a year ago.
The number of minutes terminated on mobile networks totaled 5.3 billion, an 8.3 per cent increase over the previous quarter, an increase of 13.9 percent compared to the same period a year ago.
During the third quarter of 2010 over 6.626 million written messages were sent, representing an increase of 0.7 percent over the previous quarter and in annual terms. Of the total number of SMS sent, 15 million are messages of value added representing 0.2 percent of all SMS.
As for MMS, mobile service users sent nearly 34.5 million MMS, an increase of 13.7 percent from the previous quarter and an increase of 12.4 percent over the same period last year. There were over 1.3 million video calls made, a decrease of 11.7 percent over the previous quarter. The conversation time associated with these calls also declined by 7 percent over the previous quarter.
The number of users of mobile TV service totalled just over 57.9 thousand (1.6 percent of all mobile stations with actual use of 3G services).
There was a decline of around 18 percent reported over the previous quarter, which could be associated with the football World Cup that took place during the second quarter.
The mobile TV service accounted for about 1.4 million sessions, which corresponds to around 8 monthly sessions per user.
During the same period being reported, roaming in and roaming out traffic reported an increased in calls, minutes and sent messages. The third quarter of each year is usually characterized by an increase in roaming traffic for its association with the summer holidays.
Consult:
- Mobile Services - 3rd quarter 2010 https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1064595
