As at the end of September, there were about 2.75 million fixed internet accesses in Portugal, 2.7% more than reported in the previous quarter. Optical fibre accesses, whose number increased 8% over the quarter and 34.9% year-on-year, were the main contributors to the growth seen, and now account for 21% of total accesses.
ADSL remains the leading internet access technology for fixed broadband (39.4 percent of the total), followed by cable modem (36.4%).
There were 4.5 million Internet users in Portugal who actually used mobile broadband, an increase of 14.9% versus the previous quarter and an increase of 24.4% compared to the same quarter of 2013, making this quarter's growth the highest on record. Of the total, 3.5 million accessed the Internet using mobile phones. Meanwhile, the evolution of mobile broadband has been driven by the increasing number of smartphone users, who already represent 47.1% of all mobile users (an increase of 8.7 percentage points compared to the same period of 2013).
Grupo PT's share of fixed accesses was reported at 49.3%, around 0.5 percentage points below the previous quarter, while Grupo NOS reported a 34.8% share of access, declining 0.1 percentage points from the previous quarter. For the 6th consecutive quarter, Vodafone was the provider that added the largest number of subscribers in net terms, reporting a share of 9.8% at the end of quarter (an increase of 0.9 percentage points over the previous quarter and an increase of 2 percentage points over the same period of 2013).
In terms of active mobile broadband customers, MEO reported a share of 47.5%, followed by Vodafone and NOS with 28.1% and 24.2%, respectively.
Broadband Internet access traffic increased by about 7.1 percent in 3Q14 - this is mainly explained by the growth in fixed broadband (+6.5%), which represents approximately 95.8% of total traffic.
Meanwhile, Internet access traffic from mobile accesses increased by 22.3%, mainly due to traffic generated by cards/modem. This type of traffic, which represents about 72% of total mobile Internet traffic, increased 26.2% this quarter. Mobile phone Internet access traffic has also been increasing (13.1% over the quarter), representing 27.6% of the total.
Average monthly traffic per broadband Internet access at a fixed location was 44.6 GB. The traffic generated by mobile broadband customers with actual use was 1.2 GB per month (5.5 GB per month in the case of cards/modem).
At the end of 3Q14, total revenues from the fixed Internet access service, (stand-alone and bundles of services that include this service), totalled 862 million euros (an increase of 10.3% versus the same period of 2013).
Revenues from the mobile Internet access service totalled 264.9 million euros - a year-on-year increase of 2%.
Consult the statistical report:
- Internet access service - 3rd quarter 2014 https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?contentId=1341003
