Dutch fixed telephony revenues have dropped by 3.2 percent (EUR 8 million) during the first quarter of 2018 to EUR 239 million. Telecompaper expects the fixed telephony revenues to decrease by 7.1 percent during the full year, according to the new edition of the Dutch Fixed Telephony Market report. According to the market researcher, the revenues for fixed telephony will continue to decrease during the coming year. This means an expected average annual decrease of 7 percent for the period until 2022.
Connections decrease accelerates
The Dutch fixed telephony market ended Q1 2018 with 6.025 million connections. This is 1.2 percent lower than in Q4 2017 and means an acceleration in quarterly decrease compared with Q3 and Q4 during which the market dropped by 1 percent.The decrease in connections is mainly due to a drop in digital telephony (VoIP) lines by 0.7 percent to end the quarter with 5.53 million. This is 41.000 less than at the end of 2017. At the same time, the number of PSTN/ISDN/WLR lines decreased by 5.5 percent to less than 500,000. This is the fourth quarter in a row that both digital phone lines and traditional phones line decrease.
For the full year 2018, Telecompaper expected a decrease in fixed telephony lines of 3.6 percent and for the period until 2022 the average annual decrease is estimated at 3.4 percent to 5.13 million phone lines.
Cable VoIP starts dropping again
Of the digital telephony technologies, cable VoIP decreased by 0.1 percent to 2.655 million in the first quarter. During 2015 and 2016, cable VoIP also had quarters with decreases, but those were always followed by quarters with growth. DSL and fibre VoIP continued to decrease, with DSL VoIP losing 1.6 percent to less than 2 million VoIP lines and fibre ended the quarter with less than 900,000 lines after a decrease of 0.8 percent during the quarter.
Ziggo stays largest provider, despite customer losses
Cable operator Ziggo has expanded its lead on number 2 KPN, despite losing fixed telephony customers. Ziggo’s market share grew by 0.4 percentage points to 42.3 percent with 2.548 million fixed telephony customers, despite losing 3,000 customers during the first quarter of 2018. At the same time, KPN (PSTN, DSL and fibre) lost 64,000 fixed telephony customers to end Q1 with 2.44 million. This amounted to a market share of 40.5 percent, 0.6 percentage points lower than in Q4 2017.
