7.4% of households in Portugal use DTT exclusively

7.4% of households use DTT exclusively

Television is part of the daily lives of Portuguese households. A family may have several means of access to receive the television signal. ANACOM publishes the report “Means of access to the TV signal in 2024”, which results from a set of questions about means of access to the TV signal posed by ANACOM and collated and collected by Statistics Portugal (INE) in the “Survey on Use of Information and Communication Technologies by Families”, carried out between May and August 2024.

In 2024, around 7.4% of households exclusively used Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT), which allows national mainstream channels to be broadcast live and free of charge, and 16.2% of households simultaneously accessed Pay TV (subscription TV signal distribution service) and DTT in their main residences, a decrease compared to the previous year (-0.9 p.p. and -8.3 p.p. respectively).

Considering only the main residences, 88.7% of households had Pay TV, which was the main means of access to the TV signal used by families. In turn, DTT was used by 23.7% of households in their main residence, not necessarily exclusively. The percentage of households with DTT access in this type of residence fell by 9.4 percentage points (p.p.) between 2023 and 2024, reaching the lowest figure since 2016.

About 10% of households had secondary residences, with almost half of them reporting having some DTT access there (46.0%).

Considering the main residences and the households with secondary residences, it is estimated that around 25.7% had access to the TV signal through DTT. This was lower than the previous year (-8.7 p.p.).

With regard to the amount of equipment, 1.6 million television sets with access to DTT were counted in 2024 (-24.6% compared to the previous year). Television sets in main residences contributed to the fall (-28.5%), representing 85% of the total TV sets with access to DTT.

DTT households tend to have more than one TV with this type of access, both in main residences and in secondary residences.

The use of DTT by households varies according to their geographical location, in both main and secondary residences.

The Alentejo (10.4%), Centre (10.4%), West and Tagus Valley (9.4%) and North (9.3%) regions registered the highest percentage of households with exclusive access to DTT, placing them above the national average. If DTT is considered not necessarily exclusively, these regions also stand out for their greater penetrations (between 26% and 28%). However, the rate of Pay TV penetration was higher than the national average in the autonomous regions (AR), the Setúbal Peninsula and Greater Lisbon.

Household typology and income influence the means of access to the TV signal used. Families with children and with higher incomes tend to experience greater penetration of Pay TV. By contrast, families without children, and lower-income households, saw higher rates of DTT penetration. About 16.4% of lower-income households (1st quintile) had exclusive access to DTT.

Compared with the previous year, there was a decrease in the rate of DTT penetration in single-parent families and in families composed of two adults with children.