The total number of main telephone accesses installed at customer request stood at 4.04 million at the end of the 4th quarter, corresponding to a penetration rate of approximately 38.1 accesses per 100 inhabitants. Compared to the previous quarter, there was a slight decrease in the number of accesses (-0.6%). Year-on-year the number of accesses installed at customer request saw a fall of 2.1%.
In this quarter the number of installed public payphones stood at approximately 41.5 thousand, a fall of about 1.7% compared to the previous quarter and a fall of 4% year-on-year.
In terms of share of accesses, the companies of the Portugal Telecom Group (Grupo PT) held about 71.9% of all accesses installed at customer request, 0.9% less than at the end of the previous quarter and 6.2% less than a year earlier. Grupo PT (PT Group) has seen a relatively sharp decline in its share since the beginning of 2004. This trend stems from the following factors: the declining use of the traditional Fixed Telephone Service; growth of the packaged offers by cable television and Internet operators; and the appearance in early 2005 of an offer that uses GSM as the access technology, which has seen considerable expansion over the last year; SLRO based offers.
There were around 3.185 million fixed telephone service customers using direct access during the period being reported, a decrease of 1.4% on the previous quarter and a 1.9% fall on the same quarter of 2006. This trend was driven by new offers based on GSM technology and the packaged offers of fixed telephone and cable television and/or Internet that have been appearing in the market.
Regarding indirect access using pre-selection, the number of customers fell by 17.7%, to 290 thousand. This trend is explained by the new providers focusing on other business models with prospects of higher return and by new tariffs of the incumbent operator.
In the last quarter of 2007 there were 41 thousand active customers using call-by-call selection. This represents an increase on the previous quarter of 23.1%, resulting from a substantial increase of this type of customer for alternative operators, and fall of 39.9% over the same quarter of the previous year.
With respect to the customers of nomadic VoIP, in December there were around 77 thousand active customers, representing a rise of 50.9% over the previous quarter and a rise of 2152.5% over the fourth quarter of 2006.
Grupo PT's (PT Group) share of direct access customers fell to 68.9% at the end of December, representing a year-on-year decline of 7.6% and a quarterly decline of 0.9%.
Total traffic originating on the fixed network during the fourth quarter totalled around 2.132 billion minutes resulting from 715 million calls. Compared to the previous quarter, the number of minutes rose by 6.2% and the number of calls rose by 5.1%. Meanwhile compared to the figures recorded the year before, there has been a fall, both in terms of the number of minutes and in terms of the number of calls.
As far as traffic in minutes is concerned, this decline in traffic in comparison to the fourth quarter of 2006 can be explained by the sharp fall in dial-up internet access traffic (down 62.1%) in the face of the strong expansion of internet access using broadband technologies. Meanwhile, in terms of calls, the year-on-year fall in total traffic is in the most part explained by a fall seen in national fixed-fixed traffic (-4%), as a consequence of its relative weight in total traffic.
In comparison to the same period of the previous year, a decline has also been seen in voice traffic. This reflects a fall in national traffic to fixed numbers (down 1.3% in minutes and down 4% in calls year-on-year). Meanwhile national traffic to mobile numbers saw a fall in terms of minutes of 2.1% year-on-year and a slight increase of 0.3% year-on-year in terms the number of calls.
With regard to traffic associated with the nomadic VoIP service, it can be seen that its weight in respect of total traffic has increased over time, reaching 2.2% in terms of minutes and 1.4% in terms of calls. Nomadic VoIP totalled around 47.8 million minutes in December, representing an increase of 66% compared to the previous quarter, resulting from around 10 million calls.
In the quarter being reported, the companies of Grupo PT (PT Group) saw their share of voice traffic continue its downward trend, both in terms of minutes (67.5% in the quarter, 1.6% less than in the previous quarter) and in terms of the number of calls (67.2, 1.5% less than in the previous quarter).
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