Telecommunications Market Data Update Q2 2018

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

Fixed voice services generated £1.9bn in revenues in Q2 2018, a decrease of 3.5% quarter-on-quarter and down 7.9% from Q2 2017. BT’s share of these revenues was 42.4%, a decrease of 1.1 percentage points from the previous year.
Access revenues decreased by £33m from Q1 2018, while call revenues fell by £37m during the same period. In Q2 2018, access accounted for 79% of total revenues, up 1.6pp year-on-year.
There were 32.7 million fixed exchange lines (including PSTN and ISDN channels) in Q2 2018, 345k (1.0%) fewer than in Q1 2018 and a 1.6% (516k) year-on-year decrease. BT’s share of these lines remained stable during the quarter, at 38.6%.
UK fixed telephony lines generated 11.3 billion minutes of outgoing calls in Q2 2018, down by 15% (2.0 billion minutes) compared to Q2 2017.

The UK had 26.2 million fixed broadband connections in Q2 2018, up 0.2% (52k) from the previous quarter and 2.0% (526k) from Q2 2017.
BT’s share of these lines was 35.5%, a decrease of 0.2pp from the previous quarter.
For the first time, there were over 10 million ‘other (inc. FTTx)’ lines (which are almost all fibre broadband lines) in Q2 2018. This was a year-on-year increase of 1.7 million lines (20.9%).

Mobile telephony services generated £3.9bn in retail revenues in Q2 2018, a £80m (2.1%) increase from the previous quarter and an £61m (1.6%) increase compared to a year previously.
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M connections) was 83.8 million at the end of Q2 2018, down 0.1 million (-0.2%) from a year previously. Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions decreased by 0.2 million (-3.1%), to 4.8 million.
Average revenue per subscriber in Q2 2018 was £15.56, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay subscribers (at £20.60 and £4.84 respectively).