Telecommunications Market Data Update Q1 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 generated £1.8bn in revenues in Q1 2019, a decrease of 3.6% quarter-on-quarter and down 8.1% from Q1 2018. BT’s share of these revenues was 41.9%, a decrease of 2.8 percentage points from the previous year.
Access revenues decreased by £74m (5%) from Q1 2018, while call revenues fell by £85m (19%) over the same period. In Q1 2019, access accounted for 80% of total revenues, up 3pp YoY.
There were 31.9 million fixed exchange lines (including PSTN and ISDN channels) at the end of Q1 2019, 103k (0.3%) fewer than in Q4 2018 and a 180k (0.6%) year-on-year decrease. BT’s share of these lines was 38.6% in Q1 2019, a decrease of 0.4pp from from the pevious quarter.
UK fixed telephony lines generated 10.3 billion minutes of outgoing calls in Q1 2019, down by 2.7 billion minutes (21%) compared to Q1 2018.

The UK had 26.7 million fixed broadband connections at the end of Q1 2019, up 109k (0.4%) from the previous quarter and 502k (1.9%) from Q1 2018.
BT’s share of these lines was 34.4%, a decrease of 1.3pp year-on-year.
There were 12.5 million ‘Other (inc. FTTx)’ lines (predominantly fibre) at the end of Q1 2019, a year-on-year increase of 2.5 million lines (25%).

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 Q1 2019, a £25m (0.7%) decrease from a year previously.
Average revenue per subscriber in Q1 2019 was £13.45, with post-pay subscribers generating more revenue than pre-pay subscribers (at £17.26 and £4.74 respectively).
The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 83.9 million at the end of Q1 2019, down 0.2 million (0.2%) from a year previously. Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions decreased by 0.5 million (9.2%), to 4.5 million.
The number of mobile voice calls was 40.0 billion in Q1 2019, down 0.4 billion (0.9%) 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%), while data usage continued to increase rapidly, up 160PB (30%) year-on-year.