Communications Market Report 2020

Ofcom has published its Communications Market Report.

Revenue from telecoms contributed £32 billion to the UK economy in 2019. Retail fixed and mobile generated £13.4 billion and the remainder was from wholesale revenues. Ofcom also reported that 80% of households have a fixed broadband connection and 98% have a mobile phone.

Key findings – Telecoms

• Average increase in usage of 31% for fixed data and 34% for mobile data.
• 67% of all UK broadband connections were superfast and over half of connections were FTTC and full-fibre lines by the end of 2019.
• Ultrafast connections accounted for 3% of residential broadband lines.
• Average data use for fixed broadband connections was 315GB/month and for mobile 2.9GB/month.
• Fixed originated calls, SMS and MMS declined while mobile-originated calls remained unchanged.
• The average UK household spent £77.50 per month on telecom services in 2019 which is a 6% decrease since 2018 and equates to 3% of the total average monthly household spend.
• Pay-monthly continued to be the most common type of mobile subscription at 74%.

Key findings – TV and audio-visual

• In 2019 the weekly reach of live TV was 86%.
• Daily viewing was on average 3 hours 3 minutes with people aged 75+ watching almost 6 hours dropping to 1 hour 9 minutes among 16-24-year-olds.
• Lockdown in 2020 caused a brief reversal in some of these trends.
• Content available on subscription video-on-demand platforms grew with total hours across the six largest UK platforms, reaching 152,304 in 2019 up from 138,986 in 2018.
• Revenue from SVoD grew 27% to £1.7bn, accounting for 54% of online video revenue in the UK.
• Total multichannel spend grew over the year to £4.96bn driven by a 15% year-on-year increase in programme spend on film channels.
• PSB spend on first-run UK-originated content fell, but third-party spend increased to £549m in 2019.
• Total audio-visual revenues were flat at £16.2bn in 2019, with growth in online video advertising and SVoD revenue offsetting declines in pay-TV and TV advertising revenue.

Key findings – Online

• UK online advertising market generated £15.7bn in 2019.
• Internet take-up remained unchanged in 2019.
• The proportion of households with no internet connection at home remained unchanged at 13%, which is particularly high for the 75+ age group, at 43%.
• UK internet users on average spend 3 hours 29 minutes using the internet per day.
• 39% of the total time spent online by adults in the UK in September 2019 was spent on Google owned sites (including YouTube) and Facebook-owned sites (including Instagram and WhatsApp).