Telecommunications Market Data Update Q3 2020

Published: 22 October 2020

Last updated: 16 March 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 services generated £1.7bn in revenue in Q3 2020; a fall of £42m (2.4%) from the previous quarter. BT’s share of these revenues remained stable at 48.7%.
Access and add-on call bundles generated £1.5bn in revenue in Q3 2020, accounting for 87.5% of total fixed voice revenues.
There were 32.2 million fixed exchange lines (including PSTN, ISDN and managed VoIP connections) at the end of Q3 2020, 86k (0.3%) fewer than at the end of the prevous quarter.
Total fixed-originated call volumes fell by 1.4 billion minutes (11.3%) to 10.8 billion minutes during the quarter, having increased sharply during the initial phase of Covid-19 lockdown in Q2 2020.

There were 27.1 million fixed broadband lines at the end of Q3 2020, an increase of 93k (0.3%) from the previous quarter.
The number of ADSL lines fell by 555k (8.9%) in Q3 2020, while the number of cable broadband lines increased by 15k (0.3%) and the number of ‘Other inc. FTTx’ lines (predominantly fibre broadband connections) increased by 633k (4.1%).
There were 16.3 million ‘Other inc. FTTx’ broadband lines at the end of Q2 2020, accounting for 59.9% of all UK fixed broadband connections.

Mobile telephony services generated £3.1bn in retail revenues in Q3 2020, a £284m (8.4%) decrease from a year previously.
Average monthly revenue per subscriber was £12.37 in Q3 2020, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay users on average (£15.26 compared to £4.71).
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 84.2 million at the end of Q3 2020, down 0.1 million (0.1%) from a year previously.
Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions increased by 0.3 million 6.2%) to 4.8 million.
The number of mobile-originated voice calls minutes increased by 7.3 billion (18.3%) to 46.9 billion minutes in the year to Q3 2020, with calls to landlines increasing by 24.7% to 10.4 billion minutes.
Roaming call volumes decreased by 45.5% to 0.5 billion minutes compared to Q3 2019, the key driver of this fall being travel restrictions that were introduced to combat the spread of Covid-19.
The number of mobile messages (including SMS and MMS) saw a significant year-on-year decline, down 4.2 billion messages (26.1%) to 11.9 billion.
Data usage continued to increase rapidly, up 217 PB (24.6%) year-on-year to 1,099 PB.