Telecom Monitor for Q1 2014
In the first quarter of 2014, various internet providers raised their internet download speeds without their customers having to pay extra. This was revealed in the Telecom Monitor, which the Netherlands Authority for Consumer and Markets (ACM) published today. At the end of the first quarter, 81 percent of all subscriptions had a download speed of at least 10 Mbps (compared with 67 percent last year). Forty-three percent of all subscriptions had a download speed of more than 30 Mbps (which was 37 percent), while 11 percent had a download speed of 100 Mbps or higher (which was 4 percent).
The download speeds on the different networks vary considerably. Of all DSL subscriptions (copper network), 86 percent do not exceed 30 Mbps, while 60 percent of cable subscriptions had a download speed of 30 Mbps or higher. Virtually all fiber-optic subscriptions (98 percent) have a download speed of 30 Mbps or higher. In the first quarter of 2014, cable providers raised the download speeds of their subscriptions, increasing the share of subscriptions with download speeds of 10 Mbps or higher from 74 percent to 98 percent.
In the previous quarter, the number of broadband subscriptions over cable increased by 52,000, while the number of subscriptions over DSL decreased by approximately 37,000. The total market grew slightly, in part because of the increase in the number of subscriptions over fiber-optic (26,000).
Mobile services
In the first quarter, more than 11.1 million mobile devices had internet access. The total number of connections in the first quarter of 2014 was 21.6 million, which is a drop of more than 100,000 connections in one year.
“In mobile telephony, we see that market participants without networks of their own have welcomed almost a quarter more subscribers. That growth primarily came at the expense of prepaid connections of providers that have networks of their own,” says Henk Don, Member of the Board of ACM.
Mobile data traffic continues to grow quarter after quarter. Compared with the first quarter of 2013, mobile data usage in the first quarter of 2014 increased by more than 60 percent. By contrast, mobile voice traffic increased by only 9 percent over that same period, while the number of text messages dropped by 26 percent.
Background
The Telecom Monitor covers striking trends in the market figures of the first quarter of 2014. In the Telecom Monitor, ACM compares the figures of the first quarter of 2014 with those of the same quarter in 2013. The Telecom Monitor shows the trends in mobile services, fixed telephony, broadband, television, and business network services, and is based on data coming from the main market participants in the telecom industry.