With an average of 1h20 per month on the telephone, the time spent by the French in communication on a fixed telephone has reached a historically low level in France. Unsurprisingly, users prefer their smartphone, with consumption still just as high, over 3h30 per month.
Certainly, Arcep occupies the media scene this Tuesday, April 12, 2022. Indeed, the telecoms policeman has just relaunched the allocation of frequencies to Starlink. Elon Musk’s satellite internet service has lost the use of the hertzian frequencies allocated by Arcep, by decision of the Council of State.
At the same time, Arcep has just published on April 7 its observatory of the electronic communications market in France for the 4th quarter of 2021. The opportunity to take stock of the economic health of this sector and the consumption of French people in communications. In particular, we learn that operator revenues increased throughout 2021between 2 and 4% in one year each quarter.
But what should be remembered from this report is above all the death of fixed telephony. In France, voice consumption on fixed networks has never been so low. While it has been constantly decreasing since 2013, fixed subscribers spent more time on their fixed telephone during the first confinement, with 2h17 on average in the second quarter of 2020.
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With the end of the pandemic, the French are abandoning the landline
Only and since the easing of sanitary measures, i.e. around the first half of 2021, this average consumption has dropped drastically to reach 1h20 on average per month. On the RTC network (switched telephone network), the finding is the same with approximately 1h27 per month in the second half of 2021, i.e. a drop of 13 minutes in one year. On this subject, Orange has started the removal of the RTC network in a first French geographical area, before complete closure by 2026.
For telecom operators, this drop in consumption has a concrete impact on revenues from “classic” telephony. Orange, SFR and others recorded a 25% drop in revenues, to reach the 132 million euros over the quarter. Of course, fixed telephony revenues represent a tiny fraction of operators’ total revenues.
Unsurprisingly, mobile calls are doing particularly well. Despite a slight drop compared to the figures recorded towards the end of 2022, traffic per subscriber remains at a higher level than those observed before the health crisis: 3h48 per month per SIM card this quartercompared to 3h28 in the 4th quarter of 2019. During the first confinement, this consumption amounted to 4h27 per month, a historic record.
Source : Arcep
