The number of text messages sent has roughly halved in the Netherlands over the past four years. ACM announces this in its Telecom Monitor. The same applies to the number of calling minutes via a fixed telephone connection.
This can be read in the ACM Telecom Monitor 2022 the number of text messages in the Netherlands has decreased from 3.32 billion in 2019 to 1.80 billion in 2022. The number of calling minutes via a fixed connection has halved to 4.81 billion in the same period, according to the market regulator. In 2019, that number was still 8.88 billion minutes. According to ACM, these figures show the shift from fixed to mobile telephony, in addition to the transition from text messaging to mobile data usage. To illustrate: last year, 32.3 billion minutes of mobile calls were made and 1207 petabytes of mobile data were used. However, the number of mobile calling minutes also decreased last year; in 2021 there were still 49.3 billion.
The number of mobile subscriptions increased further to 17.5 million in 2022, where there were still 16.9 million in 2021. The number of prepaid SIM cards fell from 1.6 to 1.4 million. The number of fixed telephone connections also declined. In 2021 there were 5.09 million, but last year there were still 4.57 million.
The market regulator also writes that the number of telephone number requests has risen sharply in the past year. According to her, this is due to the emergence of IoT devices with connectivity options, such as smoke detectors or alarm systems that can exchange data remotely. Last year, ACM issued 37 percent more telephone numbers for those use cases. According to ACM, 89 percent of 06 numbers have now been issued.
Furthermore, ACM says that by 2022, approximately 2.5 billion euros will have been invested in fixed networks, for example for the installation of fiber optics. The number of fiber optic connections will grow by 1.2 million to 5.7 million in 2022. ACM previously reported that there are now more households with a fiber optic connection than without a fiber optic connection. At the same time, the number of active fiber optic subscriptions grew less rapidly. There are now 2.31 million, compared to 1.89 million in 2021. Coax still remains the most popular connection type, with almost 8 million connections and 3.43 million active internet subscriptions.
