Telecommunications Market Data Update Q3 2018

31 January 2019

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

Figures relating to the number of landlines and the associated access revenues have been restated to resolve an issue regarding the double-counting of some lines. The number of fixed broadband lines has also been updated.

Fixed voice services

  • UK fixed voice service revenues totaled £1.9bn in Q3 2018, a decrease of 1.2% (£24m) from the previous quarter and down 8.5% (£174m) from Q3 2017. BT’s share of these revenues was 42.7%, an annual decrease of 1.5 percentage points.
  • Access revenues accounted for 79% (£1.5bn) of total fixed voice revenues, up 1.9pp YoY.
  • Fixed voice call volumes continued to decline in Q3 2018, with the total number of outgoing minutes generated by UK landlines dropping by 5.5% to 10.6 billion. This represents a year-on-year decrease of 17.4% (2.2 billion minutes).
  • There were 31.8 million fixed exchange lines (including PSTN and ISDN channels) in Q3 2018, 67k (0.2%) fewer than in Q2 2018 and a 0.9% (280k) year-on-year decrease. BT’s share of these lines was 39.2%, a 0.4pp decrease from the previous quarter.

Fixed broadband services

  • There were 26.4m fixed broadband lines at the end of Q3 2018, a YoY increase of 605k (2.3%).
  • Of these lines, 11.1 million (42.0%) were “other inc. FTTx” lines – predominantly fibre broadband connections – a 7.9pp increase from Q3 2017.
  • BT’s retail share of these lines was 34.9%, a decrease of 0.5pp from the previous quarter.

Mobile services

Due to inconsistencies in the way device revenues are reported, we have not included mobile revenue figures for 2018 in this update.

  • The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M) was 84.0 million at the end of Q3 2018, down 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 (7.1%), to 4.6 million.
  • The number of mobile voice calls was 39.9 billion in Q3 2018, up 2.32 billion (6.2%) from the year previously, while the number of mobile messages (including SMS and MMS) continued to decline, down 0.4 billion (1.9%) over the same period.

Telecommunications data revenues, volumes and market share update Q3 2018 (PDF, 369.7 KB)

Telecommunications data revenues, volumes and market share update Q3 2018 (CSV, 97.6 KB)