Telecommunications Market Data Update Q4 2011

In the following section we highlight some of the key trends emerging this quarter from the data we collect on the UK telecommunications sector.

Total fixed line telephony revenues were £2.2 billion in 2011 Q4, 4.9% lower than in 2010 Q4. Over the same period, access revenues increased by 6.0% while call revenues fell by 17.5%, a reflection of increasing take-up of line rental tariffs which include bundled calls.
Total fixed-line call volumes fell by 12.0% to 28.0 billion minutes in the year to 2011 Q4, with the rate of decline in residential call volumes (13.3%) being higher than that in the business market (9.1%).
At the end of 2011 there were 33.2 million UK fixed lines, 179k less than a year previously as a result of a 299k fall in the number of business lines. The total number of residential lines increased by 120k over the same period, partly as a result of a fixed line being required to access DSL broadband services.

At the end of 2011 Q4 there were 20.4 million UK non-corporate UK broadband connections, 1.3 million (6.8%) more than there had been at the end of 2010.
BT remained the largest UK retail broadband provider during the quarter, its market share increasing by 0.1 percentage points to 29.3%, 1.1 percentage points higher than it had been a year previously.

Mobile telephony services generated 0.9% more retail revenue in 2011 Q4 than the same quarter the previous year, resulting in the annual figure for 2011 rising by 1.0% compared with 2010 - the first annual rise since 2008.
Call volumes fell when comparing both 2011 Q4 with 2010 Q4 and 2011 with 2010 - by 2.0% and 1.1% respectively. This contrasts with the fact that call volumes increased every year from 2003 to 2010. Volumes of SMS and MMS increased 17.2% from 2010 to 2011.
The number of active mobile subscribers rose by 0.2% from 2011 Q3 to 2011 Q4, and 0.6% from 2010 Q4 to 2011 Q4, bringing the figure to 81.6 million. The number of active mobile broadband (dongle and datacard) subscribers in 2011 Q4 had increased 4.9% compared with one year earlier - to 5.1 million.

Telecommunications market data tables Q4 2011