Executive Summary
95.4% of households with a fixed telephone
In the 2nd quarter of 2024 (2Q2024), the main telephone access penetration rate was 51.8 accesses per 100 inhabitants. The penetration rate of accesses installed at the request of residential customers totalled 95.4 per 100 private households, 1.4 percentage points (p.p.) lower than in the same quarter last year. This decrease was due to the increase in the annual estimate of private households by Instituto Nacional de Estatística (the National Statistics Institute).
Number of customers increased by 1.1%
In 2Q2024, the number of direct access fixed telephone service customers was approximately 4.5 million, 48.8 thousand more (+1.1%) than in the 2nd quarter of 2023 (2Q2023). The observed growth is in line with the continued penetration of bundled offers that include the fixed telephone service.
Next generation networks responsible for access growth
The number of main telephone accesses totalled 5.5 million equivalent accesses, 53.8 thousand more than in the same quarter last year, the smallest increase (+1.0%) recorded since the 4th quarter of 2019. This growth was due to the increase in accesses supported by fibre optic and cable TV networks.
In 2Q2024, accesses supported by next generation networks (FTTH, cable TV networks and mobile networks at a fixed location) accounted for 93.0% of telephone accesses, having increased their weight by 2.0 p.p. compared to the same quarter last year. On the other hand, the number of analogue accesses fell by 28.1% compared to the same quarter last year, representing only 3.9% of the total.
Number of public payphones down by 27.9%
The number of public payphones installed was around 8.5 thousand, a decrease by 27.9% compared to 2Q2023.
Traffic in minutes originating from public payphones has also decreased by 33.4% in 2Q2024. Since the 2nd quarter of 2016, this type of traffic has decreased by 87.4%. This downward trend is explained by the replacement of this type of traffic by mobile phone calls and other forms of Internet-based communication.
1.9 million ported geographic numbers
At the end of 2Q2024, there were around 1.9 million ported geographic numbers and around 19.3 thousand other ported non-geographic numbers. In 2Q2024, 23.6 thousand geographic numbers and 63 other non-geographic numbers were ported, an increase by 14.2% and 68.8% respectively compared to the same quarter last year.
Traffic originating from the fixed network decreased by 11.4%
In the period under review, the volume of minutes originating from the fixed network decreased by 11.4% compared to the same period last year.
In terms of call types, the decrease was mainly due to a reduction in fixed-to-fixed traffic (-16.2%) and, to a lesser extent, to the reduction in fixed-to-mobile traffic (-4.1%), in national traffic to short numbers and non-geographic numbers (-21.0%) and in outgoing international traffic (-9.6%).
Monthly traffic per access fell by 5 minutes
In 2Q2024, on average 37 minutes per access per month were used, of which 23 minutes were for fixed-to-fixed calls, 8 minutes for fixed-to-mobile calls and 1 minute for international calls. Compared to 2Q2023, 5 minutes less were used per access per month (-12.3%)
Provider shares
In 2Q2024, MEO’s share of direct access customers was 41.8%, followed by Grupo NOS with 34.1%, Vodafone with 21.0% and NOWO with 2.5%. Compared to the same quarter last year, MEO’s share of direct access customers remained stable, while NOWO’s and NOS’s share decreased by 0.1 p.p. and 0.2 p.p. respectively. On the other hand, Vodafone’s share increased by 0.3 p.p.
