Growing revenues from mobile broadband internet access services

In the electronic communications market, investments in mobile network operators have increased, and there is a significant increase in the number of connections to fibre technology.

Zagreb, 9 October 2023 In the first half of 2023, revenues from the electronic communications market totalled EUR 815,3 million, which is 10% more than in the first half of last year. Mobile broadband services with revenues of more than 10% contributed the most to this growth, while total mobile revenues rose by almost 13%.

This year, compared to the previous year, investment in the mobile network surpassed investment in the fixed network. Investments in fibre and cable networks as very high capacity networks (VHCN) have been expected to continue, and the migration of users to fibre technology has an impact on the growth of their number while simultaneously decreasing connections to copper infrastructure. Comparing the same period last year with the second quarter of this year, the number of fibre connections continued to grow by almost 33 percent, while the number of broadband connections on copper pairs decreased by almost five percent. Thus, the share of users with VHCN broadband connections in the total number of connections via fixed networks is 21 percent, and the share of connections with a speed higher than 100Mbit/s is increasing, which is 37.5 percent in the middle of the year.

The service of publicly available fixed telephone service continues with the trend of decreasing the number of connections, traffic and total revenues. The number of connections in a year is 3 percent lower and there are 1.219.681 in the middle of this year, total outgoing traffic is 12 percent lower, while total fixed telephone revenues are almost 10 percent lower amounting to EUR 31 million.
The number of pay-TV connections at the end of the second quarter stood at 932.187, growing minimally from the same period last year. However, the total revenue from pay-TV services continues to grow regardless of the stagnation in the number of users and is almost 5 percent higher. 

Data on the electronic communications market are available on the website of the Croatian Regulatory Authority for Network Industries (HAKOM) at the following link.