Telecommunications Market Data Update Q3 2019

Published: 30 January 2020

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 services generated £1.7bn in revenues in Q3 2019; a fall of £36m (2.0%) from the previous quarter and £0.1bn (6.9%) year-on-year. BT’s share of these revenues was 41.1%, a year-on-year decline of 1.7 percentage points.
Access revenues accounted for 80.6% of total fixed voice revenues in Q3 2019; unchanged from Q2 and a 1.7 percentage point increase compared to Q3 2018. Call revenues continued to fall, down by £57m (14.3%) year-on-year.
There were 31.7 million fixed exchange lines (including PSTN and ISDN channels) at the end of Q3 2019, 109k (0.3%) fewer than in the previous quarter and down 52k (0.2%) from Q3 2018.
UK landlines generated 9.5 billion minutes of outgoing calls in Q3 2019, down by 100 billion minutes (1.0%) from Q2 and 1.7 billion minutes (15.3%) from Q3 2018.

There were 26.8 million UK fixed broadband connections at the end of Q3 2019, a year-on-year increase of 350k (1.3%).
The number of ‘Other’ (inc. FTTx) connections (predominantly FTTC and full-fibre lines) increased by 2.5 million (22.9%) in the year to Q3 2019 when, for the first time, they accounted for over half (51.4%) of all fixed broadband connections.
BT’s share of total fixed broadband connections was 34.1%, in Q3 2019, a decrease of 0.7pp from a year previously.

Mobile telephony services generated £3.4bn in retail revenues in Q3 2019, a £129m (3.7%) decrease from a year previously.
Average revenue per subscriber in Q3 2019 was £13.35, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay subscribers (at £17.03 and £4.86 respectively).
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 84.9 million at the end of Q3 2019, up 0.9 million (1.1%) from a year previously. Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions decreased by 0.1 million (1.6%), to 4.5 million.
The number of outgoing mobile voice calls minutes was 39.6 billion in Q3 2019, down 0.2 billion (0.6%) from a year previously.
The number of mobile messages (including SMS and MMS) continued to decline over the same period, down 2.7 billion (14.5%), while data usage continued to increase rapidly, up 245PB (38.3%) year-on-year.