Telecommunications Market Data Update Q2 2021

Published: 28 October 2021

Last updated: 16 March 2023

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 services generated £1.5bn in revenue in Q2 2021, a fall of £68m (4.3%) compared to the previous quarter. BT’s share of these revenues remained stable at 51.0%.
Access and add-on call bundle revenues accounted for 88.9% of fixed voice revenues in Q2 2021.
The total number of fixed lines (including PSTN lines, ISDN channels and managed VoIP connections) fell by 344k (1.1%) during the quarter to 31.5 million.
Fixed-originated call volumes decreased by 1.3 billion minutes (12%) during the quarter, totaling 9.8 billion minutes and returning to similar levels to Q4 2019.

There were 27.5 million fixed broadband lines at the end of Q2 2021, an increase of 53k (0.2%) from the previous quarter and 427k (1.6%) year-on-year.
The number of ADSL lines fell by 314k (6.7%) in Q2 2021, while the number of cable broadband lines increased by 43k (0.8%) and the number of ‘Other inc. FTTx’ lines (predominantly fibre broadband connections) increased by 324k (1.9%).
There were 17.8 million ‘other inc. FTTx’ broadband lines at the end of Q2 2021, accounting for 64.7% of all UK fixed broadband connections.

Mobile telephony services generated £3.06bn in retail revenues in Q2 2021, a £54m (1.7%) decrease from a year previously.
Average monthly revenue per subscriber was £12.20 in Q2 2021, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay users on average (£14.64 compared to £5.19).
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 83.9 million at the end of Q2 2021, up 0.8 million (0.9%) from a year previously.
Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions increased by 0.4 million (8.2%) to 5.1 million.
The number of mobile-originated voice call minutes decreased by 3.4 billion (6.8%) to 46.2 billion minutes year-on-year, with calls to landlines decreasing by 10.2% to 9.8 billion minutes.
Roaming call volumes decreased by 7.2% to 0.3 billion minutes compared to Q2 2020.
The number of mobile messages (including SMS and MMS) saw a year-on-year decline, down 0.8 billion messages (7.6%) to 10.1 billion.
Data usage continued to increase rapidly, up 347 PB (32.9%) year-on-year to 1,402 PB.