AGCOM: less and less copper, more and more fiber

AGCOM released the data of its Communications Observatory, photographing a trend that is confirmed year after year on the basis of two parallel pressures: on the one hand, the reduction of fixed network lines (130 thousand units compared to the previous quarter and 390 thousand units compared to September 2019), on the other hand the shift of the center of gravity towards high-performance lines (especially as regards the optical fiber). In particular, accesses to the copper fixed line network fell to less than 40%: they were 85% only in five years ago, which well describes the speed of the transition in progress despite the thousand problems in the diffusion of fiber in internal areas.

Less copper, more fiber

The increase in the average speed of the network is the result of the following data:

FTTC (+7.06 million units ); FTTH (+1.16 million); FWA (+ 610 thousand). The performance of the various players in the sector is also different: in the FWA area, for example, Linkem is losing ground (-2.2%) while the direct opposite Eolo and Tim gain 3.1% and 3.4% respectively. . The FCC and FTTH areas also go in the direction of differentiation and greater competition, where the dominant brands (Tim -1.8% and Fastweb -6.3%) lose with an advantage distributed over their counterparts. Only on the DSL market is there a strengthening of the dominant actor, with Tim growing by a further 3.3% reaching 56.4%.



Photography offered by the Observatory relates to the month of September 2020, for which statistical data are also available on the use of the network:

Analyzing the internet usage data, […] 42 million average daily users surfed the net for a total of 59 hours per month per person. Moving on to the audience of the main social networks, even with a decrease of 2.2% on a quarterly basis, Facebook with 36.1 million unique users is confirmed as the main platform used by users. A similar trend is observed for other social networks whose consumption in September 2020 continues to record contractions after the growth observed during the lockdown period: equal to -1.8% for Instagram and Pinterest and -1.4% for Twitter. For the first time since its debut, audience values ​​are slightly decreasing for Tik Tok of the ByteDance group, attended by 6.5 million users (-0.4% on a quarterly basis).

On the rise the volume of traffic recorded is also tendential, although on this front the trend is much more accelerated on the mobile front (especially in the year just ended).

Source: AGCOM