Mobile broadband (MBB) internet access traffic increased 36.8% in 2019, associated with an increase of 44% in mobile phone access and 20.3% in access via PC/tablet/pen/router. Between 2015 and 2019, annual average growth in MBB traffic was 46%, associated with an average increase of 76.3% in access via mobile phone and 16.5% in access via PC/tablet/pen/router. It should also be noted that monthly traffic per active mobile internet user increased 28.2% in 2019 compared to the previous year. Each MBB user consumed an average of 3.8 GB per month.
In 2019, actual users of the mobile internet access service increased to 8.1 million, 6.9% more than the previous year, which corresponds to penetration of around 78.8 per 100 inhabitants (5.1% more than in 2018). This growth is associated with the increasing number of people accessing the internet via mobile phone, which increased 7.4% compared to 2018, to around 7.6 million.
At the end of 2019, penetration by the mobile service had reached 171 per 100 inhabitants. If we take into account mobile access with actual use (excluding machine-to-machine communications – M2M) the penetration rate would be 120.9 per 100 inhabitants. On the other hand, if we exclude accesses exclusively related to data services and internet access (cards associated with PC/tablet/pen/router), mobile service penetration would be 115.9 per 100 inhabitants.
An analysis of the number of mobile accesses shows that, at the end of 2019, the total number of devices using the services stood at 17.6 million. Of these, 12.4 million (70.7% of the total) were actually used (excluding M2M). If we also exclude the number of accesses via PC/tablet/pen/router, the number of mobile accesses stood at 11.9 million.
The number of subscribers actually using the service increased 0.4% in 2019 compared to the previous year. This rise is explained by the popularity of post-paid and hybrid plans (+5.3% in the last year), which continue to show a growth trend, while pre-paid plans are falling, now representing 41.3% of the total (-10.3 percentage points compared to 2015).
Mobile voice traffic in turn increased 2.8% in terms of minutes compared to 2018. Conversation time through mobile voice access in 2019 was an average of 204 minutes per month, 4.8 minutes more than the same period last year. The developments which took place in voice traffic in minutes were due mainly to the growth in off-net traffic, which increased 5.3% compared to 2018 .
Also of note is the significant growth in international roaming traffic, which, with the exception of the number of text messages, showed remarkable increases in all types of traffic in 2019, compared to the previous year, in particular internet traffic (58.5% more for roaming in and 74.1% more for roaming out).
Over the last 5 years, in terms of traffic in minutes, the balance for roaming (roaming in - roaming out) was higher only in 2017. On the contrary, in the case of internet access, roaming in traffic is substantially higher than roaming out traffic. In 2019, the volume of roaming in traffic was 3.8 times higher than roaming out traffic.
Observation of the market distribution in 2019 shows that MEO was the operator with the highest share (41.9%) of active mobile accesses with actual use, followed by Vodafone (30.2%) and NOS (25.4%). Compared to 2018, the NOS mobile access share has increased by 0.6 p.p., with Vodafone and MEO shares falling by 0.1 p.p. and 0.8 p.p., respectively.
In the case of the shares of subscribers with mobile broadband internet access in 2019, the MEO share was 38.4%, followed by Vodafone with 30.3% and NOS with 29.2%. In terms of MBB traffic, NOS has the highest share (42.5%), followed by Vodafone and MEO (28.7% and 28.3%, respectively).
Consult the statistical report:
- Mobile services https://www.anacom.pt/render.jsp?categoryId=377877
