Telecommunications Market Data Update Q2 2022

Published: 27 October 2022

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 service revenues totaled £1.44bn in Q2 2022; a decrease of £11m (0.8%) from the previous quarter and £106m (6.9%) year-on-year. BT’s share of these revenues was 48.9%.
The number of fixed exchange lines (including PSTN, ISDN and managed VoIP connections) fell by 412k (1.3%) during the quarter to 31.0 million.
Total fixed-originated call volumes decreased by 833 million minutes (9.5%) during the quarter, to 7.9 billion minutes.

There were 27.8 million fixed broadband lines at the end of Q2 2022, an increase 228k (0.8%) year-on-year.
There were 19.3 million ‘other inc. FTTx’ broadband connections (predominantly fibre-to-the-cabinet and full fibre connections) at the end of Q2 2022, accounting for 69.2% of all lines.
The number of ADSL lines fell by 204k (6.1%) during the quarter, while the number of cable lines increased by 16k (0.6%) and the number of ‘other inc. FTTx’ lines increased by 180k (0.9%).

Mobile telephony services generated £3.25bn in retail revenues in Q2 2022, a £191m (6.3%) increase from a year previously.
Average monthly retail revenue per subscriber was £12.65 in Q2 2022, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay users (averaging £15.23 compared to £5.26 for pre-pay).
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 86.1 million at the end of Q2 2022, up 2.2 million (2.6%) from the year before.
Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions increased by 0.1 million (2.1%) to 5.2 million.
The number of mobile messages (including SMS and MMS) saw a year-on-year decline, down 1.0 billion messages (10.3%) to 9.1 billion.
The number of mobile-originated voice call minutes decreased by 4.0 billion (8.6%) to 42.3 billion minutes year-on-year, with calls to landlines decreasing by 11.7% to 8.7 billion minutes.