Who calls a landline? Calls of this type have fallen to an all-time low.

BarcelonaPreviously, when only landlines existed, people called homes. But the rise of mobile telephony has changed these habits. Now, instead of calling a home, people call an individual. This trend, more pronounced among individuals, is also taking hold in business and professional communications, as confirmed by the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC), the telecommunications market regulator in Spain. The data is clear: since 2020, call traffic to landlines has fallen by nearly 65% in the residential segment and almost 35% in the business segment. "Average revenue per line has decreased from €3.39 to €1.96 per month. If we consider total voice traffic, both landline and mobile, fixed-line voice traffic represents only 7.4%," the CNMC added. The CNMC report also indicates that Telefónica has the largest market share in terms of fixed-line telephone traffic, with 41%, followed by MasOrange with 29%. Given this situation, the market regulator has decided to deregulate fixed-line telephony in Spain. The CNMC has approved the deregulation of the wholesale fixed-line call termination market, meaning that the obligations currently imposed on operators in this business segment will be lifted within the next six months, as the entity announced in a statement. Fixed-line termination allows customers of one operator, whether fixed or mobile, to call fixed-line users of other operators. Therefore, the operator making the call pays a termination fee to the receiving fixed-line company.

In this way, all fixed-line telephone operators make calls to other operators and, at the same time, receive calls from others. Therefore, all fixed-line telephone operators are simultaneously termination service providers and customers of their competitors. In this context, the market analysis carried out by the CNMC confirms, on the one hand, that the use of fixed-line voice calls is steadily declining.

Without risk of excessive prices

From a wholesale perspective, the CNMC's market analysis indicates that each operator acts as a monopolist within its network and that "there is no risk of excessive prices being established" due to European regulations, which set a maximum wholesale fixed-line termination price of 0.07 cents per minute for all European Union countries. "The CNMC also does not consider it likely that operators will engage in anti-competitive practices other than excessive pricing (such as denial of access or discriminatory conditions). In the hypothetical event that this were to occur, the CNMC could act using regulatory tools such as dispute resolution or the imposition of symmetric obligations," the entity warned. The CNMC has emphasized that, in addition to its own analysis, it also took into account the observations of the European Commission and the public consultation launched in mid-May to make the decision to deregulate the fixed-line call termination market.