Telecommunications Market Data Update Q1 2023

Published: 27 July 2023

In the following section we highlight some of the key trends emerging this quarter from the data we collect on the UK telecommunications sector.

Fixed voice services

UK fixed voice service revenues totalled £1.33bn in Q1 2023; a decrease of £59m (4.3%) from the previous quarter and £118m (8.2%) year-on-year. BT’s share of these revenues was 49.3%.
The number of fixed exchange lines (including PSTN, ISDN and managed VoIP connections) fell by 667k (2.2%) during the quarter to 29.4 million. This decline is due to the growing availability and take-up of standalone broadband services and the decline of residential landlines.
Total fixed-originated call volumes decreased by 1498 million minutes (17.1%) year on year, to 7.3 billion minutes.

There were 28.1 million fixed broadband lines at the end of Q1 2023, an increase of 261k (0.9%) year-on-year.
There were 20.0 million ‘other inc. FTTx’ broadband connections (predominantly fibre-to-the cabinet and full fibre connections) at the end of Q1 2023, accounting for 71.1% of all lines.
The number of ADSL lines fell by 176k (6.2%) during the quarter, while the number of cable lines increased by 25k (0.5%) and the number of ‘other inc. FTTx’ lines increased by 368k (1.9%).

Mobile telephony services generated £3.2bn in retail revenues in Q1 2023, a £113.3 (3.7%) increase from a year previously.
Average monthly retail revenue per subscriber was £12.17 in Q1 2023, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay users (averaging £14.64 compared to £5.04 for pre-pay).
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 86.9 million at the end of Q1 2023, up 1.6 million (1.9%) from the year before.
Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions grew by 168k (3.3%) to 5.2 million.
The number of mobile-originated voice call minutes decreased by 2.4 billion (5.4%) to 42.3 billion minutes year-on-year, with calls to landlines decreasing by 11.3% to 8.4 billion minutes.
The number of mobile messages (including SMS and MMS) saw a year-on-year decline, down 1.6 billion messages (17.1%) to 7.9 billion.