The UK regulator Ofcom has counted up the numbers for the UK communications market and it shows the extent to which fixed lines are declining, and shows how wireless ARPU is beginning to turn down in the recession.
It tried to put a good spin on things by pointing out that in total UK fixed voice call and access revenues only went down by 0.9% during Q4 2008 to £2.2 billion. But there was bad news for fixed line revenues and for BT.
BT’s market share of fixed exchange lines fell from 63.9% in the 4th quarter of 2007 to 58.6%, a fall of 5.3% in just one year.
The total number of exchange lines fell by 119,000 in the quarter with BT reporting a massive 469,000 fall in its lines. Call volumes also fell, down by 738 million minutes (2.1%) to 34.6 billion minutes in the quarter, with a year-on-year fall of 3.4 billion minutes.
At the end of 2008 there were 17.3 million residential and small business UK broadband connections, which is up just 2.1% from the immediate last quarter, but was a year-on-year increase of 1.7 million connections (11%).
In mobile Vodafone is seen to be losing ground against O2 who are now neck and neck in UK cellular revenues at £963 million and £954 million respectively, on voice and SMS minutes combined. Vodafone still had more post pay subscribers than any other cellular operator in the UK, at 7.9 million, while T-Mobile is the leading Pre-pay supplier in customer numbers at 12.7 million, just ahead of O2 which had 11.8 million while Vodafone had just 8.6 million pre payers.
O2 now has 19.4 million customers while all three rivals (Orange, Vodafone and T-Mobile) all have 16 to 16.5 million each.
Mobile volumes are up 2% in the quarter from the immediate preceding quarter, while SMS and MMS volumes grew by 11% in Q4 2008, higher than any other quarter in 2008. Clearly people are not calling if they can text.
The ARPU of all of four suppliers has fallen, down by between £0.7 a month and £2.1, with O2 seeing the most rapid fall
Overall mobile revenue across the UK’s four largest mobile operators declined by 2% in Q4 2008 compared to the previous quarter, reflecting a 3% fall in revenue from calls and other charges and a 2% fall in messaging revenues. There was an overall year-on-year fall in revenue of just 1%.