Orange leads the Spanish 4G market that exceeds 25 million customers

The Spanish 4G market does not stop growing.The main Spanish telemarketers-Telefonica, Orange, Vodafone and MasMovil-now exceed 25 million LTE mobile customers. Specifically, during the first quarter of the year, as we have been able to read in Cinco Dias, they have incorporated a total of 1.23 million users and, during the last year, 6.61 million.Thanks to all this, today the 4G represents more than 66 , 5% of the total mobile broadband lines accumulated by the four main companies (37.62 million), according to data published by the CNMC.

Specifically, Orange Espana leads this LTE market by reaching 8.22 million 4G customers in March , representing an increase of 2.42 million customers compared to the same date of 2016, when the operator had 5.8 million.This figure corresponds to 52% of its total portfolio of mobile services customers.

Orange, therefore, remains at in front of this market thanks to its network already covering 91.4% of the Spanish population , including all the provincial capitals, as Laurent Paillassot, CEO of Orange in Spain already indicated, during the presentation of its quarterly results.) In this case, Spain would surpass Orange France, which on that date covered 89% of the population, but is still behind Poland that already reaches 99%.

'' Our good performance is the result of sustained growth in all our business lines with an increase in the number of clients of 3.5% in mobile telephony and 5.4% in broadband, compared to the same quarter of 2016, reaching almost 20 million customers.Orange offers all of them the most advanced access technologies so that they can enjoy the most attractive services and content '' , explained then Paillassot in an article published in Nobbot.

Following this same line of innovation, Orange announced in February that it starts using the LTE-M technology for its progressive deployment in its 4G networks in Europe, starting with Belgium and Spain this year.The company will implement this versatile and cost-effective technology to support the widest uses, connecting in a secure and scalable way a wide variety of devices in the field of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), from smart utility meters, asset monitoring, vending machines and alarm systems for vehicle, mHealth and wearable fleets.Likewise, LTE-M offers a rapid deployment that involves a simple software update to the 4G network.

4g customers from other operators

For its part, Vodafone managed to close March with a total of 7.6 million customers of LTE service , after adding 2.13 million last year, equivalent to 52% of its portfolio of its mobile phone user portfolio.In turn, Telefonica ended the first quarter of this year with 6.58 million 4G customers, 45.8% more than the same date last year and 2.06 million more users in absolute terms, a figure that represents 38% of its total mobile customer base. MasMovil , Yoigo and Pepehone matrix, sum about 2.65 million customers with terminal, contracted rate and 4G SIM card, although the LTE service is available for more than four million users.

The future is in 5G

But the operators are convinced that 5G will be instrumental to meet the needs of the connected society and make digitalization a reality.Manuel Sanchez Malagon, Network Planning Director of Orange Espana, explained in Nobbot that the main advantages expected from 5G are greater capacity and download speed less latency or arrival time of information packets (1 millisecond), possibility of multiplying by 100 the number of current devices connected, which will allow a large explosion of objects communicating through networks and lower battery consumption, which will facilitate new types of connected objects.

All these technical improvements will translate into specific services such as autonomous cars connected in a network, which together with sensor networks on roads and tunnels, will take the traffic to safety and efficiency levels far superior to the current ones.

»The actual commissioning 5G is scheduled for not before 2020 , so we have time to analyze the real needs of users and follow the evolution of mobile broadband consumption.This will allow us to focus the deployment of 5G as the customer requirements, ”he explained.

However, according to Sanchez Malagon, we should not wait for 5G to have similar services such as the technology for internet of things about 4G, which will arrive this year.

Source: Cinco Dias