Portuguese turning on to bundled offerings

The number of Portuguese subscribers to bundled services reached 4.1 million at the end of the first quarter, up 4.4% year-on-year, according to data released by regulator ANACOM.

Growth in uptake of these offers, which had been decelerating since 2015, appears to have been given fresh impetus last year by the popularity of quadruple and quintuple-play offerings and, to a lesser extent, triple-play services.

Quad and quint-play bundles grew by 126,000 year-on-year, while triple-play offerings increased by 64,000.

However, growth slowed down again in the first quarter, with 6.5% growth in quad- and quint-play offering to the end of March compared with 12.5% growth at the end of last year, which saw a significant migration towards higher-tier packages from dual and triple-play offerings.

Very close to half of multi-play subscribers – 49.9% or 2.05 million subscribers – now have a quad or quint-play service, while 39.8%, or 1.64 million, take a triple-play service.

Revenue from bundles services in the first quarter amounted to €429.6 million, up 5.3% year-on-year, boosted by price changes implemented by a number of service providers. Average revenue per bundled customer was €35.02, up 0.7%.

Meo had the largest share of subscribers to bundled services at the end of March, with 40.4%, followed by NOS with 37%. Vodafone had an 18.8% share and Nowo had 3.7%.

NOS had the largest share of bundled service revenues, with a 41.8% share of the overall pie, while Meo had 40.5%, Vodafone had 15% and Nowo had 1.3%.