For 2023 the Communications Observatory published byCommunications Regulatory Authority highlights, especially for the fixed network, a dynamic consistent with the trend of the Italian market in recent years: at the end of December, overall accesses showed a marginal decline (-16 thousand) on a quarterly basis, settling at around 20.11 million lines. Copper lines decreased by approximately 186 thousand units, again on a quarterly basis, and 798 thousand units compared to December 2022confirming the trend of the last four years, during which they decreased by 5.72 million hits.
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Broadband lines essentially unchanged compared to 2022
Although decreasing on an annual basis (-475 thousand lines), Fttc accesses represent approximately 49% of the overall customer base. Ftth lines grew by 290 thousand units in the last quarter of the year and by 978 thousand on an annual basis, while compared to December 2019 the increase was 3.34 million lines.
The lines are increasing, albeit to a more limited extent (around 150 thousand units on an annual basis). Fixed Wireless Access which, at the end of December 2023, amounted to 2.11 million accesses.
The lines broadband overall are estimated at approximately 18.95 million units, resulting in slight growth on a quarterly basis (+22 thousand), and substantially unchanged on an annual basis; in 2023 the decline in DSL lines (-675 thousand units) was counterbalanced by the growth of other technology lines.
The dynamics illustrated indicate a significant increase in performance in terms of marketed connection speed: lines with speeds equal to or greater than 100 Mbit/s rose from 40.3% at the end of 2019 to 73.4% in December 2023. To be highlighted the growth in the weight of lines marketed with transmission capacity equal to or greater than 1GB/s, which went from 3.2 to 22.2% in the period 2019 – 2023.
At the same time, data consumption continues to grow: in terms of overall volume, daily traffic in 2023 marked a growth of 15.6% on an annual basis, marking, at the same time, a +120% compared to the corresponding value of 2019. This is reflected in daily traffic per broadband line ; the unit consumption data, in fact, more than doubled in the period 2019 – 2023, going from 4.23 to 8.52 GB per line on average per day.
As regards the competitive framework of broadband and ultra-broadband access, at the end of December 2023, Tim confirms itself as the largest operator with 38% of accesses, followed by Vodafone with 16.4% and by Wind Tre and Fastweb with 14.2% and 13.7% respectively; followed by Tiscali (3.7%), Eolo (3.5%) and Sky (3.3%), but it should be noted that the latter, among the main players on the market, is the one that showed on an annual basis the greatest dynamism gaining 0.8 percentage points.
Mobile telephony, one million more active SIM cards
In the mobile network, at the end of December 2023, there were 108.5 million active SIM cards (Human and M2M), growing by just under 1.3 million units on an annual basis. In more detail, M2M SIMs show an increase of 1.2 million units, while that of Human (i.e. “voice only”, “voice+data” and “data only” which involve human iteration) was equal to approximately 60 thousand sims.
Human lines are represented 86.5% from residential users, while, with reference to the type of contract, just under 90% of cases fall into the “prepaid” category.
Relative to the overall SIMs, Tim is the market leader with 27.8%, followed by Vodafone with 27.1%, Wind Three with 23.7% e Iliad which reaches 9.9%. Considering only the “human” SIM segment, Wind Tre remains the main operator with 24.6%, followed by Tim with 24.1%, Vodafone with 21.7% and Iliad which, with a growth of 1, 5 percentage points on an annual basis, reaching 13.7%; with lower odds they follow PostePay (5.4%), Fastweb (4.6%) and CoopVoce with 2.7%.
In 2023, daily mobile data traffic grew by 21.7% on an annual basis and by 245% compared to 2019. Correspondingly, the average daily unit consumption in the January-December period can be estimated at approximately 0.78 GB, growing by 21.1% compared to 2022 and by over 230% compared to the corresponding period of 2019, when it could be estimated at 0.23 GB.
Visits to online platforms are growing
By analyzing the usage data of the main online platforms, Agcom highlights how in the month of December 2023 there were approximately 44.3 million unique users who browsed the internet, on average each for a total of 65 hours and 43 minutes. The set of websites and applications referring to the big international players (Alphabet/Google, Meta/Facebook/Instagram, Amazon, Microsoft) are confirmed at the top of the ranking, followed by those of some of the main national publishing groups (Cairo Communication/Rcs Mediagroup, Gedi Publishing Group, Fininvest/Mondadori).
With reference to the trend of audiences of general information sites and applications, last December 37.7 million unique users were registered, with a decline (-325 thousand visitors) compared to December 2022. Last December, with around 30 million unique users, that of “Corriere della Sera” was the most frequented site (and related applications), followed by “La Repubblica” (27 million and 499 thousand users) and “Il Messaggero” (20 million and 551 thousand internet users) .
The analysis of online e-commerce platforms highlights, with almost 39 million unique users registered in December 2023, a growth of 712 thousand visitors compared to the same month of 2022. In the first places are the e-commerce sites and applications owned by Amazon, with 37 million unique users (slightly growing by 1.4% compared to December 2022), followed by those of eBay which obtained 18 million of visitors (down by -5.8%) and of Temu, a platform that has been active on the global scene for just over a year and has quickly established itself in Italy too, reaching 12.4 million internet users.
Moving on to the portals and communities that mainly offer content generated by their members, including social network sites and applications, with almost 39.2 million unique users reached in December 2023, there is an annual growth in both visitors (+624 thousand) and the time they dedicated to browsing (21 hours and 26 minutes in the month, approximately 12 minutes more than in December 2022). Limiting the analysis to social networking services, in the first places we find the platforms attributable to the Meta group: Facebook with 36.9 million users and Instagram with 33.1 million visitors which achieve, compared to December 2022, a growth of 1% and +4.5%. Equally significant is the evolution of Tik Tok and X which recorded, compared to December 2022, an increase in their visitors of 21.4% and 2.2% respectively.
The use of videos on demand
With reference to the trend of unique users of platforms that offer video on demand services exclusively for a fee, the Observatory reports that in December 2023, with 15.1 million surfers, there is growth (+169 thousand internet users) compared to the same month of 2022. On average, in 2023, Netflix records around 8.7 million unique users, down (-1.6%) compared to 2022 and is followed by Amazon Prime Video with 6.7 million visitors (+3 ,1%). Disney+, with an average of over 3.5 million internet users, and Sky/Now, with average unique users of 1.2 million, recorded growth of +2% and +16.4% respectively, while Dazn (2.1 million average unique users) recorded a decline of -9.8% compared to 2022.
Analyzing the browsing time on the main video streaming sites that offer exclusively paid services in the month of December 2023, a growth of 11.8% is highlighted compared to December 2022. The analysis of the total hours spent by navigators on the various platforms in 2023, allows us to observe, albeit with different intensity, an overall contraction for the main operators with the sole exception of the Comcast/Sky Now service (growing by 35.7%).
Video on demand platforms that offer free services, with 35.4 million unique browsers connected in December 2023, recorded, on an annual basis, an audience contraction of 1.5 million subjects. Among the free platforms, the most visited in terms of average monthly unique users were News Mediaset Sites (with 22.1 million), Sky TG24 (with 9.8 million) and RaiPlay (7.4 million).
