Telecommunications Market Data Update Q4 2018

Published: 2 May 2019

Last updated: 16 March 2023

In this update 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 totaled £1.9bn in Q4 2018, a year-on-year decrease of £143m
(7.1%). BT’s share of these revenues was 42.1%, a year-on-year decrease of 2.1 percentage points.
Access revenues accounted for 78.8% of total fixed voice revenues in Q4 2018, a 1.3pp year-on-year increase.
Fixed-originated call volumes totalled 10.3 billion minutes in Q4 2018, a year-on year decrease of of 2.4 billion minutes (18.7%).
There were 32.0 million fixed exchange lines (including PSTN lines and ISDN channels) at the end of 2018, representing a fall of 229k (0.7%) year-on-year.

There were 26.6 million fixed broadband lines at the end of 2018, a year-on-year increase of 543k (2.1%).
Of these lines, 11.8 million (44%) were “Other inc. FTTx” lines – predominantly fibre broadband connections – an 8.9pp increase from Q4 2017.
BT’s retail share of these lines (including EE and Plusnet) was 34.6%, a decrease of 1.3pp year-on-year.

From 2018, bundled revenues are reported according to the new IFRS15 accounting standard and do not include any device revenues.

Mobile telephony services generated £3.7bn in retail revenues in Q4 2018, a £51m (1.4%) decrease from the previous quarter. Average revenue per subscriber in Q4 2018 was £14.83, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay subscribers (at £19.30 and £4.98 respectively).
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 84.0 million at the end of Q4 2018, down 0.1 million (0.1%) from a year previously. Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions decreased by 0.5 million (9.8%), to 4.5 million.
The number of mobile voice calls was 40.1 billion in Q4 2018, up 0.65 billion (1.6%) from the year previously, while the number of mobile messages (including SMS and MMS) continued to decline, down 2.7 billion (13.4%) over the same period.