The Datum Report

Occupation 7213 · Sales and customer service occupations

Communication operators

Half of full-time communication operators in the UK earn more than £36,415 a year, and half earn less.

Communication operators operate telecoms equipment to transmit and receive signals and messages.

How people enter it

Academic qualifications may not be required. On-the-job training is provided.

What the work involves

• receives messages, weather reports and other material to transmit
• tunes transmitter to required channel or wavelength and relays or receives message to/ from person or vehicle
• uses a teleprinter or telex keyboard to transmit messages to other teleprinters or telexes
• keeps record of messages sent and received
• performs routine tests and maintenance on equipment and reports faults
• receives and handles incoming calls for emergency services, transmitting to the appropriate services

Also called

Call handler (emergency services) · Communications officer · Control room operator (emergency services) · Controller (taxi service) · Emergency medical despatcher · Radio operator

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for communication operators, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 10 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Call and contact centre occupations · Customer service occupations n.e.c. · Market research interviewers · Telephonists