Telecommunications Market Data Update Q3 2023

Published: 25 January 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 £1.30bn in Q3 2023; a decrease of £18.6m (1.4%) from the previous quarter and £117.8m (8.3%) year-on-year. BT’s share of these revenues was 49.3%.
The total number of fixed lines (including PSTN lines, ISDN channels and managed VoIP connections) declined by 950k (3.3%) during the quarter to 27.6 million.
Total fixed-originated call volumes fell by 1328 million minutes (18.9%) year on year, to 5.69 billion minutes.

There were 28.6 million fixed broadband lines at the end of Q3 2023, an increase of 528k (1.9%) year on year.
There were 20.8 million ‘other inc. FTTx’ broadband connections (predominantly fibre-to-the-cabinet and full fibre connections) at the end of Q3 2023, accounting for 72.8% of all lines.
The number of ADSL lines fell by 155k (6.2%) during the quarter, while the number of cable lines grew by 28k (0.5%) and the number of ‘other inc. FTTx’ lines increased by 499k (2.5%).

Mobile telephony services generated £3.51bn in retail revenues in Q3 2023, a £144.2m (4.3%) increase from a year previously.
Average monthly retail revenue per subscriber was £13.30 in Q3 2023, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay users (averaging £16.22 compared to £5.19 for pre-pay).
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 88.7 million at the end of Q3 2023, up 1.5 million (1.7%) from the year before.
Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions declined by 172k (3.5%) to 4.8 million.
The number of mobile-originated voice call minutes declined by 3.53 billion (8.5%) to 37.98 billion minutes year-on-year, with calls to landlines decreasing by 13.4% to 7.39 billion minutes.
The number of mobile messages (including SMS and MMS) saw a year-on-year decline, down 1.72 billion messages (18.9%) to 7.38 billion.
Data usage increased, with volumes up 363 PB (18.9%) year-on-year to 2286 PB.