Telecommunications Market Data Update Q2 2019

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 £1.8bn in Q2 2019, a decrease of £27m (1.5%) from the previous quarter and £116m (6.1%) from Q2 2018. BT’s share of these revenues was 41%, down by 2.5 percentage points year-on-year.
Access revenues continued to increase their share, accounting for 80.8% of total fixed voice service revenues in Q2 2019, up 2.4pp year-on-year.
There were 31.8 million fixed exchange lines (including PSTN and ISDN channels) at the end of Q2 2019, 31k (0.1%) fewer than at the end of the previous quarter.
UK landlines generated 9.6 billion minutes of outgoing calls in Q2 2019, a 0.7 billion minute (6.5%) decrease from the previous quarter and a year-on-year decrease of 2.2 billion minutes (18.7%).

There were 26.7 million UK fixed broadband connections at the end of Q2 2019, up 50k (0.2%) from the previous quarter and 378k (1.4%) from Q2 2018.
BT’s share of these lines was 34.2%, a decrease of 1.1pp year-on-year.
There were 13 million ‘Other (inc. FTTx)’ lines (predominantly fibre) at the end of Q2 2019, an increase of 521k (4.2%) from Q1 2019 and a year-on-year increase of 2.6 million lines (24.4%).

From 2018, bundled revenues are reported according to the new IFRS15 accounting standard and do not include any device revenues.

Mobile telephony services generated £3.4bn in retail revenues in Q2 2019, a £32m (0.9%) decrease from a year previously.
Average revenue per subscriber in Q2 2019 was £13.52, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay subscribers (at £17.24 and £4.90 respectively).
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 84.3 million at the end of Q2 2019, up 0.5 million (0.6%) from a year previously. Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions decreased by 0.3 million (7.3%), to 4.5 million.
The number of outgoing mobile voice calls minutes was 40.2 billion in Q2 2019, down 0.3 billion (0.7%) from a year previously.
The number of mobile messages (including SMS and MMS) continued to decline over the same period, down 2.1 billion (11.1%), while data usage continued to increase rapidly, up 191PB (32.0%) year-on-year.