According to a survey commissioned by the Malta Communications Authority (MCA), only 46% of Maltese respondents reported applications such as WhatsApp, Skype or Messenger to be an effective substitute to a standard fixed telephony connection. The other 54 per cent prefer using a fixed telephone line over such communication applications.
The survey, which was limited to residential users, was carried out by Grant Thornton via telephone interviews. A total of 824 randomly selected respondents participated in this survey.
In a press release by the MCA the following findings were stipulated:
Almost all households have a fixed telephony connection with survey results showing that a total of 99.8 per cent of household respondents claim to have a fixed telephony subscription at their place of residence.
Respondents reported having similar levels of satisfaction to what was observed in previous fixed telephony surveys carried out by the MCA. Indeed, satisfaction levels were very high with 42% of respondents reporting being satisfied with their current service whilst 48% reported being very satisfied with their fixed telephony.
There was a general lack of knowledge on the monthly expenditure of their fixed telephony service with 78 per cent of respondents with a fixed telephony service were unable to identify their monthly expenditure on their fixed telephony service. This is an increase of 8 percentage points when compared to the same survey which took place in 2015.
Meanwhile 64 per cent of those unaware of their monthly expenditure said that they purchased their fixed telephony service in a bundle, thus were unable to identify the cost of the individual service. Two-thirds of respondents knowing their monthly payments identified their expenditure to be less than €20.00 a month on this service whilst the remaining third of respondents identified their expenditure to be between €20.00 and €50.00 monthly.
80 per cent Household respondents reported that a mobile telephony service was substitutable with a standard fixed telephony connection. This is in an increase of 3 percentage points when compared to previous surveys carried out by the MCA.