📋 Tender Overview
The Statistics and Market Monitoring department of the Luxembourg Regulatory Institute (ILR) has just published the 2023 telecommunications statistical report. It illustrates the evolution of volumes, revenues and technical data according to the data collected from operators. In 2023, the sector's overall revenue amounted to €598.1 million, marking an annual growth of +2.3%, the highest in several years. The Luxembourg telecommunications market is also distinguished by the importance of professional customers, generating a third of the sector's revenues.
In 2023, operators' total investments in technical infrastructure amounted to €104.5 million, marking a decrease of 13.0% compared to the previous year. This decrease is mainly due to a gradual reduction in investment in mobile networks. After three consecutive years of increases, mainly attributed to investments in 5G networks, spending on mobile networks fell to €28.2 million.
Major investments in mobile network infrastructure are already enabling 67.4% of the population to achieve download speeds of more than 1 Gbps in the 5G network by the end of 2023. Basic 5G coverage is thus guaranteed for almost the entire population. All the country's major centres of activity are already covered with excellent quality of service. To keep a close eye on these developments, mobile and fixed network coverage by operator is accessible via interactive maps that are regularly updated on the Institute's website, under the heading "Geographical survey of network deployment".
The increase in demand for increasingly high-performance Internet connections is accompanied by a constant strengthening of the infrastructure. Almost two-thirds of fixed Internet access is now made on the fibre optic network, a network that covers 80.3% of homes and premises at the end of 2023. Similarly, the number of customers who opted for an Internet connection with a download speed of 1 Gbps or more increased by 62.2% in 2023 and now accounts for some 12.2% of total fixed Internet access. Over the last five years, fibre optic Internet access has increased by an average of 14% on an annual basis. The growing demand from customers for increasingly efficient fixed Internet services allows operators to generate an average monthly revenue of 51.5 euros excluding tax per customer. The incumbent operator POST is the main player in the market, both in terms of the marketing of services and the volume of investments, particularly in fibre optics. POST has a 59.7% market share in terms of number of subscribers for fixed Internet access. Alternative operators, such as Proximus Luxembourg,
Orange and Luxembourg Online are gradually gaining ground thanks to regulated access to POST's network and fibre optic unbundling, thus meeting continuous demand. Overall, the traditional services offered by service providers, such as fixed telephony or even SMS and mobile telephony, are rapidly losing their appeal. With these more outdated modes of communication, operators are increasingly refocusing on high-quality fixed and mobile Internet access services. This transition is manifested, for example, in the rapid and continuous growth of mobile Internet traffic, which increased in 2023 by 22.8%, reaching an average monthly consumption per customer of 11.8 GB.
As for the wholesale market regulated by the ILR, the sale of Internet access by Post Luxembourg on its fixed network to other service providers continues to grow and now amounts to €25.5 million (+2.4% on an annual basis). Above all, unbundled fibre optic access continues to grow to 40,200 lines at the end of 2023, which corresponds to an annual increase of 12.0%.
