There was a 5.3% rise in voice traffic counted by minutes against a 0.3% rise in subscribers.
In contrast, whilst falling by an average of 5.6% per year over the last five years, the contraction in texts sent accelerated to 11.2% with each user now sending a monthly average of 228 messages against 262 in 2014 and the lowest level since 2010 but still representing an average of between seven and eight messages per person per day.
Anacom attributed the underlying trend to telecommunications packages including free calls to Portugal’s approximate ten million population with the regulator referring to the 11.8% rise in smartphone numbers.
The report identifies Internet searching as the most commonly used mobile broadband service followed by social networks, checking e-mail, sending instant messages and making VoIP calls, respectively.
Excluding machine-to-machine SIM cards, there were a total of 11.7 million active cards in the Portuguese market last year, down 1% year-on-year due to the consolidation of SIM cards resulting from no longer needing different cards to interact with different networks.
There were also ongoing shifts in market shares with the Altice-owned MEO continuing to lead the way with 44.2% of the SIM cards in effective usage but down 0.6% whilst the Vodafone share of 33.4% was down 2% year-on-year with the third player in the market, NOS, picking up 3% of the market to close last year with an average share of 20.9%.