• Consumer broadband, telephony and pay TV market revenue growth recovered to -2% in Q3 (from -6% in Q2), with the recovery in premium sports channel revenue being partially mitigated by a worsening in backbook pricing pressure at BT
• This is however still weaker than pre-COVID levels, with said backbooking pricing pressure affecting all operators to some extent, and intensifying as Ofcom-mandated end-of-contract notifications are rolled out, with annual best tariff notification due over the next few months

Contents

Executive summary: Recovery…of sorts

Broadband, line rental and pay TV net adds all accelerate

Subscriber and RGU turnarounds bode well for the future

Revenue growth recovers…somewhat

Recovery uneven across the operators

ARPU growth recovers, but remains negative for most

New customer pricing reasonably firm, and converging to high speed as standard

Backbook pricing pressure driven by Ofcom-mandated notifications

Price rises set to return…but not for a while

Full fibre and ultrafast adoption tracking: early days, but promising signs

Ultrafast launches and offers…also early days

Ofcom broadband complaints highlight BT’s progress

Q3 2020 trends: broadband continues to accelerate, Virgin Media leads the way

High speed broadband adoption recovers, but signs of saturation appear

Q3 2020 trends: line rental volumes stabilise

Q3 2020 trends: pay TV recovers strongly, may recover more

List of charts/tables