Telecommunications Market Data Update Q1 2024

Published: 25 July 2024

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 £1.22bn in Q1 2024; a decrease of £81.3m (6.3%) from the previous quarter and a decrease of £112.9m (8.5%) year-on-year. BT’s share of these revenues was 51.9%.
The total number of fixed lines (including PSTN lines, ISDN channels and managed VoIP connections) declined by 588k (2.2%) during the quarter to 26.1 million.
Total fixed-originated call volumes fell by 1,431 million minutes (22.1%) year on year, to 5.05 billion minutes.

There were 28.5 million fixed broadband lines at the end of Q1 2024, an increase of 89k (0.3%) year-on-year but unchanged quarter-on-quarter.
There were 20.9 million ‘other inc. FTTx’ broadband connections (predominantly fibre-to-the-cabinet and full fibre connections) at the end of Q1 2024, accounting for 73.4% of all lines.
The number of ADSL lines fell by 97k (4.2%) during the quarter, while the number of cable lines decreased by 165k (3.0%) and the number of ‘other inc. FTTx’ lines increased by 262k (1.3%).

Mobile telephony services generated £3.41bn in retail revenues in Q1 2024, a £227.7m (7.2%) increase from a year previously.
Average monthly retail revenue per subscriber was £12.75 in Q1 2024, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay users (averaging £15.29 compared to £5.36 for pre-pay).
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 89.0 million at the end of Q1 2024, up 2.2 million (2.5%) from the year before.
Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions decreased by 185k (3.8%) to 4.7 million.
The number of mobile-originated voice call minutes decreased by 914.4 million (2.2%) to 41.19 billion minutes year-on-year, with calls to landlines decreasing by 5.9% to 7.31 billion minutes.
The number of mobile messages (including SMS and MMS) saw a year-on-year decline, down 0.83 billion messages (10.2%) to 7.31 billion.
Data usage increased, with volumes up 297 PB (13.5%) year-on-year to 2497 PB.