Migration of accesses dial up for ADSL and other broadband technologies it is having a significant impact on traffic originating on the fixed network, both in terms of number of calls and in terms of minutes.
According to Anacom’s figures for the third quarter of 2004, total traffic originating on the fixed network between July and September was 2.8 billion minutes and 885 million calls, representing a decrease of 11 and 7 , 3 percent over the previous quarter and 16 and 8 percent over the same period last year.
The regulator justifies the decline with the «sharp drop in Internet access traffic through this type of access», following the expansion of other technologies. In number of calls, Internet traffic fell 19.9 percent, compared to the previous quarter and 49.8 percent, compared to the same period last year.
In addition to the drop in data calls, a drop in voice traffic is also noticeable, which fell 9 percent in terms of conversation minutes (just over 2 million) and 6.7 percent in terms of the number of calls made ( 791 million), during the third quarter of the year and compared to the previous quarter.
With regard to the number of customers of the fixed telephony service, the third quarter also showed a decrease of 0.3 per cent, to 3.1 million users in direct access. In turn, the number of users of indirect access voice services increased: 4.8 percent in the pre-selection mode – for a total of 420 thousand users – and 2 percent in the call-by-call mode, for a total of 85 thousand users.
The figures obtained do not change in terms of quotas, with PT maintaining control of 94 per cent of the market in direct access and new operators controlling 99 per cent of indirect accesses. In these three months, PT’s share of direct access fell by only 0.3 percent.
In terms of accesses, Anacom’s data indicates that at the end of the quarter there were 4.1 million main telephone accesses installed at the customer’s request, a number that again reflects a decrease of 0.5 percent compared to the previous quarter. In public payphones, the number of accesses increased by 5.2 percent to a total of 44.656.
In the period under review, 12 of the 21 entities authorized to provide fixed telephony services were in operation. Between these two are dedicated exclusively to the offer of direct access, three provide service only in indirect access, while the rest offer both types of access.
Anacom also publishes an update of the ported fixed numbers, which at the end of the quarter were 147,641, an increase of 7.4 percent over the previous quarter.
Related News:
2004-12-09 – Use of indirect accesses increases but PT maintains a share above 90%
2004-07-23 – PT maintains a share above 94 percent in fixed communications
2004-04-06 – Fixed network accounts for less than 4.3 million lines at the end of 2003
