Ofcom Telecommunications Market Data Update Q1 2017

The following information is provided by Ofcom and it highlights some of the key trends emerging this quarter from the data theycollect on the UK telecommunications sector.

Please note that this update includes restated figures for ‘other’ fixed providers. This is due to Ofcom revising its estimates for those fixed operators that do not submit quarterly data to Ofcom.

Fixed voice services

• Fixed voice services generated £2.1bn in revenue during Q1 2017, in line with Q1 2016. BT’s share of these revenues (excluding EE) was 43.6%, a 0.3 percentage point (pp) increase compared to Q1 2016 but a 0.5pp decline compared to Q4 2016.
• There was a total of 33.3 million UK PSTN lines and ISDN channels in Q1 2017. This represented a year-on-year decrease of 1.2% (410k) and a 0.6% (213k) fall compared to the previous quarter.
• UK landlines generated 14.8 billion minutes of outgoing calls in Q1 2017, a fall of 2.6 billion minutes (14.7%) compared to Q1 2016.

Fixed broadband

• There were 25.3 million UK fixed broadband connections at the end of Q1 2017, a year-on-year increase of 2.3% (571k), and a 0.4% (100k) increase compared to the previous quarter.
• BT’s share of these lines (excluding EE) was 32.6%, a decrease of 0.1 pp compared to Q1 2016 (32.7%).
• There were 7.1 million ‘other (inc. FTTx)’ fixed broadband lines, predominantly comprised of superfast fibre broadband connections, at the end of Q1 2017, a year-on-year increase of 1.4 million (25.5%). These connections represented 28.1% of all UK fixed broadband connections, up from 22.9% in Q1 2016.

Mobile services

• Mobile telephony services generated £3.8bn in retail revenues in Q1 2017, a £65m (1.7%) decrease from the previous quarter but a £32m (0.8%) increase compared to a year previously.
• Total outgoing mobile call volumes were 38.5 billion minutes in Q1 2017, a decrease of 0.3 billion minutes (0.8%) since the previous quarter but up 1.6 billion minutes (4.4%) compared to Q1 2016.
• The total number of outgoing SMS and MMS messages was 20.6 billion in Q1 2017, down 1.6 billion (7.4%) on the previous quarter and a decrease of 3.0 billion messages (12.6%) compared to a year previously.
• The number of active mobile subscriptions (excluding M2M connections) was 83.8 million at the end of Q1 2017, up 0.4 million (0.5%) from Q1 2016. Over the same period, the number of dedicated mobile broadband subscriptions (again, excluding M2M) remained stable at 5.0 million.

Telecoms data tables Q1 2017 PDF, 245.6 KB

Telecoms data tables Q1 2017 CSV, 18.7 KB

Story via Ofcom