OTE dominates landline telephony while Internet use lags, survey finds
OTE’s domination of domestic landline telephony, the great penetration of cellular telephony and the very small percentage of Greeks using the Internet are the main conclusions of the Consumer Survey on electronic communications by the National Telecoms and Posts Commission (EETT). The landline telephony survey found that 87 percent of households have a fixed line, with 82.3 percent of them using OTE exclusively, while the remaining 17.7 percent uses concurrently or exclusively alternative providers. Every other household spends between 25 and 50 euros per month on its landline number. In mobile telephony, penetration in households comes to about 70 percent, corresponding to 6.2 million active cellular telephone owners. The three main reasons for choosing a mobile network are low call charges (85 percent), network coverage (50 percent) and low SMS charges (36 percent). Internet findings are rather disappointing as penetration in households is no more than 16 percent, when the EU average exceeds 25 percent. Average use by all household members is one to two hours per week for 25.2 percent of users. About 86 percent use dial-up connections (PSTN or ISDN), as 43 percent do not consider having a broadband connection necessary and 25 percent are not aware about broadband’s existence.