The number of fixed telephone service customers in the direct access mode was approximately 3.184 million at the end of the third quarter, for a rise of 0.4 points over the end of the previous quarter. The new providers recorded a significant increase 13.9% in the number of direct access customers.
In indirect access by pre-selection, the number of customers rose by 2.9% to 465,000.
At the end of the third quarter there were about 99,000 active access via call-to-call selection customers, a figure - 0.6% - slightly above the one for the previous quarter.
The Grupo PT's share of direct access customers fell by 1.1 percentage points in the third quarter, to 90.9%. In the indirect access modes, the remaining operators continued to enjoy market shares above 99%.
The complement of main telephone accesses installed at customer request stood at 4.126 million accesses at the end of the third quarter of 2005, a figure indicating stabilisation of the number of total accesses. However, the number of analogue accesses declined, though compensated by growth of the other access types.
There were about 46,000 installed public payphones in this quarter, 1.2% less than in the previous quarter.
Regarding access shares, about 90.6% of total accesses installed at customer request pertained to the Portugal Telecom group companies, 0.9 percentage points less than in the second quarter. The lower share results from the declining use of traditional fixed service and the growth of package offers from the cable television and Internet operators; an offer using GSM technology as the access technology also appeared.
Total traffic originating in the fixed network during the third quarter of 2005 was about 2.446 billion minutes, resulting from approximately 783 million calls.
Compared to the previous quarter, the volume of minutes fell by 6.9% and the volume of calls by 5.2%. In year-on-year terms, some 12.1% fewer minutes originated in the last quarter than in the same period of the previous year. The volume of calls fell by 5.2% in year-on-year terms. This traffic downturn is mainly due to the sharp drop in dial-up Internet access traffic, a result of the strong expansion of Internet access via broadband technologies.
Regarding voice traffic, about 2.024 billion minutes originated in the fixed network, resulting from about 761 million calls. This corresponds to respective negative variations of 5.1% and 5% compared to the previous quarter. These variations reflect a decline in national traffic to fixed and mobile numbers. There was, however, a rise in outgoing international traffic.
In the third quarter, 20.3% of total voice minutes were originated via indirect access, 0.1 percentage points more than in the previous quarter and about 1.3 percentage points above the figure recorded in the same quarter of the previous year. Of total voice calls made, 20.7% were effected by indirect access, a figure similar to the one seen the previous quarter and 1.1 percentage points more than the one for the year-on-year quarter.
PT's shares of national voice traffic continued to fall during the quarter under review, both in minutes (73.6% at the end of September, one percentage point below the figure recorded the previous quarter) and in calls (73.8% at the end of 3Q05, 0.7 percentage points below the figure for the previous quarter). In the last 12 months the new providers increased their shares, in terms of minutes, by about 3.6 percentage points.
There were 22 authorised providers of fixed telephone service at the end of the third quarter of 2005, one more than in the previous quarter.
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