Summary

  • Ofcom’s Q2 2026 release shows 3,294 petabytes of mobile data, up 13.2% year on year, while its estimated retail “data services” revenue line is £340 million, down from £349 million in Q2 2025.
  • Those aggregates do not reveal a price per gigabyte, operator margin, customer-level yield or cause. Revenue classification, bundled accounting and estimated traffic coverage must be understood before drawing commercial conclusions.

The headline figures appear to tell opposing stories. In the quarter ending June 2026, UK mobile data volumes reached 3,294 petabytes, 384 PB more than a year earlier. The same statistical release lists £340 million of estimated retail revenue under “Data services”, compared with £349 million in Q2 2025. Calculated from the published values, that is a 13.2% increase in volume beside a 2.6% decline in that revenue category. The contrast deserves attention, but it is not a finding that a gigabyte became cheaper by 13.9%, or that operators lost money carrying data.

The first reason is that these are different statistical objects. The volume column covers traffic across mobile networks. The revenue table separates “Access and bundled services” from data services, calls, messaging and other categories. Ofcom notes that bundled revenues have been reported under IFRS 15 since 2018 and exclude device revenue. The public table does not provide a bridge showing how every plan, allowance, promotion, wholesale payment or bundle component is allocated between those categories. Thus, the label “Data services” is not a universal tariff for the bytes in the traffic column.

A mechanical division can be useful only as a warning about the limits of the dataset. Dividing £340 million by 3,294 PB and comparing that quotient with £349 million divided by 2,911 PB produces a lower ratio in Q2 2026. That calculation pairs an estimated retail revenue category with total network traffic. It is not a measured price per GB: the numerator and denominator may not match in customers, services, accounting allocation or wholesale scope. It says nothing by itself about the cost of capacity, network investment, profitability, or whether extra traffic was supplied at zero marginal cost.

The broader mobile panel adds context but does not solve the join. Total mobile telephony retail revenue rose 1.0% year on year to £3.724 billion. Active subscriptions excluding machine-to-machine connections reached 91.5 million, 1.7% higher. Average monthly retail revenue per subscriber was £13.63, against £13.68 a year earlier; the reported post-pay and pre-pay values were £16.22 and £5.41. These totals combine services and user types. The release does not publish matched operator-level records linking an individual subscriber’s plan, usage, revenue allocation and the cost of serving that traffic.

Nor should end-period subscription counts be used as if they were an average customer denominator for a quarter.

Ofcom also flags uncertainty in data collection. The volume table “includes estimates where Ofcom does not receive data from providers”; the report says historical figures may be restated after provider revisions or methodological improvements. These caveats are not evidence that the Q2 values are wrong. They define how much precision the public series can support. A change in an estimate can move the apparent gap even when underlying demand or accounting treatment has not changed in the same way.

For an operator, the useful follow-up is not a simplistic price-per-GB chart. It is a reconciled panel: retail data-service revenue and bundled-access revenue by plan type; traffic by customer cohort and service; active and average subscribers; wholesale and roaming traffic; capacity and energy cost; and the accounting rules used to allocate bundles.

For a regulator or investor, publication of definitions, restatement histories and a safe, comparable operator split would make the next question answerable: whether rising usage is supporting customer value and sustainable investment, or merely increasing load faster than the revenue categories reveal.

Heng Lu’s Note 68 offers an editorial prompt about connecting provider economics with customer continuity and delivered value. It supplies no evidence about UK revenue or Ofcom’s methods. Applied here, the question is narrow: when an operator says traffic growth is valuable, what service outcome or commercial measure demonstrates that value? The Q2 release shows traffic growth; its public aggregates do not finish that calculation.

Sources