Growth in the mobile broadband sector, including smartphones, tablets and datacards, failed to offset a general contraction in Spain’s telecom market in 2012.
According to the regulator CMT, the economic crisis and general reductions in prices saw the market’s revenues fall by 7.2%, with the mobile telephony (-15.9%) being the hardest hit. In the case of the fixed broadband sector, revenues fell by 4.6% to €3,659 million.
Total investment by operators exceeded €4,000 million but was 8.9% down on the previous year, while direct employment in the telecom industry shrunk by 10.7%.
Significantly, expenditure on double play packages (broadband and voice), received by 7.7 million subscribers, fell by 6.9% in 2012 to a monthly average of €35 a month.
At the same time, the number of quad and quintuple subscriptions at year’s end stood at over 1.2 million.
The number of homes with access to DOCSIS 3.0 exceeded 9.6 million, while and 3.2 million had access to FTHH.
Of these, 336,719 were active, almost double the number in 2011.
