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
- 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.
Fixed broadband
- 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
- 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
Telecommunications market data tables Q4 2011
