Spain was reconfirmed as one of the European Union countries with the highest coverage of fiber optic to the home (FTTH). Throughout the year 7.5 million new fiber accesses were installed, reaching a total of 64.5 million new generation networks, of which 54 million are from FTTH.
Thanks to this, the country’s average speed continues to grow at a spectacular speed, with 76.2% of the fixed broadband lines contracted exceeding 100 Mbps speed. The rest are distributed between 30 and 100 Mbps (5.6%), between 10 and 30 Mbps (14.5%) and less than 10 Mbps (3.6%). Therefore, 82% of the lines in Spain already have a speed greater than 30 Mbps.
Convergent packages triumph in Spain
Interestingly, 96.6% of broadband lines are marketed together with another service, mostly a mobile line. The converged packets with landline, mobile and Internet, and those that also include television, represented 82.7% of the contracted packages.
Despite this, average spending fell in packages without TV, and grew slightly in those with TV. Of the 7.8 million subscribers to TV, 6.4 million have it contracted with some package.
Pay TV has also grown significantly in the last year, something that Vodafone already dropped in the middle of the week. The operator revealed that each time users consume paid content instead of DTT, and that is reflected in the figures offered by the CNMC, with operator television, cable TV and Online TV growing. Only satellite TV is the only one that falls into subscribers.
In 2019, a total of 48 million mobile lines accessed the Internet, being 2.1 million more than the previous year. 77% of those lines accessed through 4G, although we will have to wait for the figures to be published next year to know those of 5G.
MásMóvil and OMVs gain market share
As to market share, the five Spanish operators (Movistar, Orange, Vodafone, MasMóvil and Euskaltel) accumulated 85% of the market’s retail revenues. In total, the sector’s turnover was 34,426 million euros, 0.2% less than in 2018. Retail revenue fell 0.5% to 25,075 million, while wholesalers increased 0.8% to 9,351 million euros.
Market shares fell in the case of Movistar (29.6%), Orange (24.8%) and Vodafone (22.4%). MásMóvil grew 0.9% to 13.3%, while Euskaltel grew 0.8% to 9.9%.
At the level of portability, were carried out 9.5 million portabilities in 2019, close to the record reached in 2018 with 9.8 million portabilities. This year it is clear that the figures of the previous year will not be exceeded, since portabilities were stopped for three months.
Net mobile portability also benefited MásMóvil and OMV, which were the only ones that grew with 459,016 and 383,539 new registrations, respectively. Vodafone lost 164,081 lines, compared to 292,717 for Movistar and 385,757 for Orange.
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