Telecommunications Market Data Update Q4 2023

Published: 25 April 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 Q4 2023; an increase of £3.0m (0.2%) from the previous quarter and a decrease of £91.9m (6.6%) year-on-year. BT’s share of these revenues was 51.4%.
The total number of fixed lines (including PSTN lines, ISDN channels and managed VoIP connections) fell by 967k (3.5%) during the quarter to 26.6 million.
Total fixed-originated call volumes fell by 1403 million minutes (20.6%) year on year, to 5.42 billion minutes.

There were 28.2 million fixed broadband lines at the end of Q4 2023, an increase of 38k (0.1%) year on year.
There were 20.4 million ‘other inc. FTTx’ broadband connections (predominantly fibre-to-the-cabinet and full fibre connections) at the end of Q4 2023, accounting for 72.2% of all lines.
The number of ADSL lines decreased by 120k (5.0%) during the quarter, while the number of cable lines increased by 86k (1.6%) and the number of ‘other inc. FTTx’ lines grew by 136k (0.7%).

Mobile telephony services generated £3.49bn in retail revenues in Q4 2023, a £215.3m (6.6%) increase from a year previously.
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 89.2 million at the end of Q4 2023, up 2.5 million (2.9%) from the year before.
Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions decreased by 145k (2.9%) to 4.8 million.
Average monthly retail revenue per subscriber was £13.05 in Q4 2023, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay users (averaging £15.79 compared to £5.33 for pre-pay).
The number of mobile-originated voice call minutes fell by 274.3 million (0.7%) to 41.82 billion minutes year-on-year, with calls to landlines decreasing by 13.5% to 7.39 billion minutes.
The number of mobile messages (including SMS and MMS) saw a year-on-year decline, down 0.98 billion messages (11.1%) to 7.82 billion.
Data usage grew, with volumes up 324 PB (15.1%) year-on-year to 2474 PB.