Telecommunications Market Data Update Q4 2019

Published: 18 June 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 service revenues totalled £1.7bn in Q4 2019, a year-on-year decrease of £145m (7.8%). Annual revenues for 2019 stood at £7.1bn, a decrease of £485m (6.4%) from the total for the previous year.
Access revenues accounted for 80.5% of total fixed voice revenues in Q4 2019, a 1.8pp year-on-year increase.
Fixed-originated call volumes totalled 9.5 billion minutes in Q4 2019, a year-on-year decrease of 1.4 billion minutes (13.2%).
There were 31.3 million fixed exchange lines (including PSTN lines and ISDN channels at the end of 2018, representing a year-on-year fall of 199k (0.6%).

There were 26.8 million fixed broadband lines at the end of 2019, a year-on-year increase of 241k (0.9%).
Of these lines, 14.3 million (53.2%) were classed as “Other inc. FTTx” lines – predominantly fibre broadband connections – an increase of 2.5 million (21%) compared to Q4 2018.

Mobile telephony services generated £3.3bn in retail revenues in Q4 2019, a £110m (3.2%) decrease from a year previously.
Average revenue per subscriber in Q4 2019 was £13.02, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay subscribers (at £16.32 and £4.97 respectively).
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 85.5million at the end of Q4 2019, up 1.5 million (1.8%) from a year previously. Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions slightly decreased by 0.2%, to 4.5 million.
The number of outgoing mobile voice calls minutes was 41.5 billion in Q4 2019, up 1.5 billion (3.7%) from a year previously.
The number of mobile messages (including SMS and MMS) continued to decline over the same period, down 2.1 billion (11.6%) to 15.8bn.
Data usage continued to increase rapidly, up 245PB (35.7%) to 929 PB year-on-year.