Telecom market figures for Q2 2014: bottom for text messages appears to have been reached

The decline in the number of text messages sent in the Netherlands has been halted. This has been one of the conclusions of the Telecom Monitor for the second quarter of 2014, which the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) released today. The decline began in late-2010, and had continued until recently, but now a slight increase in the number of sent text messages can be observed. With over 1 billion messages per quarter, it appears that, for now, the bottom for text messages has been reached.

Another trend in the Telecom Monitor is showing no signs of slowing down. Compared with the first quarter of 2014, mobile data traffic has increased considerably, by almost 25 percent. In the second quarter, 11.3 million mobile devices had mobile internet access. Compared with the same period in 2013, mobile data traffic has increased by 83 percent. “We are seeing that mobile data becomes more and more important in the business models of telecom operators. Investments in better and future-oriented networks such as the 4G-network definitely contribute to that trend,” says Henk Don, Member of the Board of ACM.

Download speeds over cable are becoming faster and faster

The Telecom Monitor has also revealed that consumers with internet access subscriptions over cable are able to enjoy higher and higher download speeds. In the second quarter of 2014, 98 percent of cable subscriptions had a download speed of more than 10 Mbps. In the same period in 2013, it was 75 percent. In the space of a year, the number of cable subscriptions with downloads speeds of 100 Mbps or higher has tripled from approximately 214,000 to approximately 679,000 subscriptions.

The trend of higher download speeds can also be observed in the copper and fiber-optic networks. The strongest growth has been achieved with the subscriptions on the copper network with download speeds between 30 Mbps and 100 Mbps. In the space of a year, the number of these subscriptions has increased from 391,000 to 479,000. This growth was at the expense of those with download speeds below 10 Mbps. On the fiber-optic networks, the share of subscriptions with download speeds of more than 100 Mbps has increased from 31 percent to 35 percent, when compared with the same quarter in 2013.