Mobile market sees slight drop

After a strong increase in the previous quarters, the growth in mobile-data consumption appears to level off. In the first quarter of 2026, mobile-data consumption decreased slightly compared with the previous quarter, and has returned to the level of the third quarter of 2025. Also, the number of mobile plans, mobile voice minutes, and text messages went down. The number of fiber-optic plans and the number of bundles where fixed services are combined with mobile services continue to increase. This has been revealed by ACM’s Telecom Monitor (external website) for the first quarter of 2026.

The decline in the number of text messages (-6.1 percent) fits in a trend that has been observed for some time now. The number of mobile voice minutes decreased this quarter by -2.7 percent but remains stable over the long term. However, the decline in mobile plans (-1.7 percent) and data consumption (-1.4 percent) mark a break with previous quarters. Dutch telecom operators KPN and Odido continue to be market leaders on the mobile market with 25-30 percent. When looking at data consumption, Odido’s market share has increased from 45-50 percent to 50-55 percent. With such market shares, Odido is the largest operator in terms of data.

The market for fixed telephony continues to decline. In the first quarter, there were 3.69 million fixed connections, a decrease of 1.63 percent compared with the previous quarter. It is notable that the number of voice minutes over a fixed connection has remained stable for the third consecutive quarter, and has even shown a slight increase.

Broadband

The number of broadband plans over fiber-optic rose by just over two percent to 3.49 million, while the number of plans over cable (-2,27 percent) and copper (-3.76 percent) went down. The bandwidth per household continues to increase. In the first quarter, the share of households with connections of at least 100 Mbps rose to 91.6 percent. This increase is mainly due to a rise in the number of end-users that have broadband connections with download speeds of 1 Gb/s or more.

Fiber-optic continues to grow

The number of fiber-optic connections continues to grow. At this point, the Netherlands has now just over nine million connections. 3.68 million of these connections are in use. The utilization of the copper network continues to decrease (-4.23 percent).

The number of activated fiber-optic connections has decreased slightly compared with the available fiber-optic connections. One of the reasons is that, sometimes, multiple connections are available per address. ACM considers this a positive development, because individuals are then able to choose between different fiber-optic providers. This ‘excess of connections’ also ensures that telecom providers without their own fixed networks are less dependent on network operators.

About the monitor

Each quarter, ACM publishes the Telecom Monitor. It gives an overview of the trends and developments in the telecom sector. The largest market participants in the telecom industry regularly submit data about their activities to ACM for the Telecom Monitor. ACM checks this information and, in that way, keeps a close watch on the trends and developments in the different markets. This data serves as a key foundation for ACM’s market analyses. The trends are presented in an interactive dashboard. In this dashboard, users are able to select a time period from 2013 and onwards to view the market figures for the telecommunication sector. Additionally, users are able to receive more information about the presented figures by hovering their mouse over the interactive elements.

See also

ACM’s Telecom Monitor (externe website) (in Dutch)