Telecommunications Market Data Update Q3 2024

Published: 23 January 2025

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 retail fixed voice revenues totalled £1.19bn in Q3 2024; a fall of £19.9m (1.6%) compared to the previous quarter and a decrease of £101.0m (7.8%) year-on-year. BT’s share of these revenues was 50.6%.
The total number of fixed lines (including PSTN lines, ISDN channels and managed VoIP connections) declined by 986k (3.8%) during the quarter to 25.0 million.
Total fixed-originated call volumes fell by 1.41 billion minutes (24.9%) year on year, to 4.25 billion minutes.

There were 29.1 million fixed broadband lines at the end of Q3 2024, an increase of 682k (2.4%) year on year.
There were 21.8 million ‘other inc. FTTx’ broadband connections (predominantly fibre-to-the-cabinet and full fibre connections) at the end of Q3 2024, accounting for three-quarters (75%) of all lines.
The number of ADSL lines declined by 128k (6.1%) during the quarter, while the number of cable lines fell by 22k (0.4%) and the number of ‘other inc. FTTx’ lines grew by 235k (1.1%).

Mobile telephony services generated £3.59bn in retail revenues in Q3 2024, a £63.3m (1.8%) increase from a year previously.
Average monthly retail revenue per subscriber was £13.37 in Q3 2024, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay users (averaging £16.17 compared to £5.35 for pre-pay).
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 89.5 million at the end of Q3 2024, up 558k (0.6%) from the year before.
Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions declined by 31k (0.6%) to 4.8 million.
The number of mobile-originated voice call minutes declined by 1.97 billion (4.9%) to 38.36 billion minutes year-on-year, with calls to landlines decreasing by 8.9% to 6.65 billion minutes.
The number of mobile messages (including SMS and MMS) saw a year-on-year decline, down 0.86 billion messages (11.0%) to 6.93 billion.
Data usage grew, with volumes up 187 PB (7.7%) year-on-year to 2,624 PB.