Communiqué de presse

- Operators' sales rose 10.6% in value and 23% in volume over one year, reflecting major price decreases - In 2001, on average, each person in France spent 45 hours talking on the telephone, and 20 hours surfing on Internet

12 June 2002

Autorité de régulation des télécommunications (ART) publishes today the results of its eighth quarterly survey with telecommunications operators. This quarter's Observatory reports on the results of the fourth quarter 2001 and the entire year 2001.

  • A market growing strongly

During the last three months of 2001, total operators' revenues rose to almost €8.5 billion, up 5.8% over the same period in 2000; bringing growth for the entire year 2001 to 10.6%.

The two main components of the market are fixed telephony at €14.5 billion (down 1.3% although the volume of minutes rose, since prices fell on this segment), and mobile telephony, at €9.9 billion (up 26%).

Internet access from operators holding a public telephony license represented sales of €1.161 billion in 2001, compared with just €731 million in 2000, for growth of close to 59%.

Fixed and mobile telephony represented close to 163 billion minutes in 2001: this means that each inhabitant spent 45 hours on the telephone per year, and 20 hours surfing on low-speed Internet (compared with 44 hours and 9 hours in 2000).

Sales

(in millions of euros)

Year 2000

Q1 2001

Q2 2001

Q3 2001

Q4 2001

Year 2001

Variation 2001/2000

Fixed telephony

14 631

3 658

3 603

3 529

3 646

14 436

-1,3%

Internet access

731

292

293

271

305

1 161

+58,8%

Mobile telephony

7 789

2 324

2 490

2 537

2 525

9 876

+26,8%

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Telephony plus Internet

23 151

6 274

6 386

6 337

6 477

25 473

+10,0%

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Advanced services

1 842

432

442

458

462

1 794

-2,6%

Leased lines

2 011

575

590

581

599

2 345

+16,6%

Data transport

530

145

146

175

188

654

+25,7%

Information, directories and advertising

320

87

76

96

83

2 114

+6,9%

Terminals and equipment

1 760

388

533

517

676

342

+20,1%

Call centre hosting and management

20

8

11

14

11

44

+128,8%

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Total market

29 633

7 909

8 196

8 179

8 496

32 780

+10,6%

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  • Activity of new operators

Two figures clearly show the condition of this activity:

- The interconnection market grew to close to €7 billion in 2001 (+17%), up 37% in volume.

- Pre-selection: at end 2001, close to 8 million people in France had pre-selected an operator competing with France Telecom: 5.1 million for call-by-call selection, and 2.8 million for pre-selection.

  • Internet and mobiles, keys to the growth of the services and telecoms markets
  •  

As in 2000, Internet and mobile telephony led sector growth with strong rises in both revenues (respectively 59% and 27%), and volumes (114% and 25%).

The year 2001 was marked by a change in the structure of traffic volumes: fixed telephony now represents just 50% of the market, compared with 65% last year. On the other hand, Internet now represents 31% of the market, compared with 16% in 2000. Mobiles have maintained their market share of the previous year.

The number of Internet minutes sold by telecoms operators grew to 21 billion in the fourth quarter 2001, twice that of a year earlier. Internet is the main factor of growth of the volume of calls in 2001.

Finally, it must be noted that the number of SMS sent during the fourth quarter grew 30% over the preceding quarter, and topped one billion messages sent in three months.


Linked documents

  The telecommunications services market Observatory   fr