The Belgians have therefore once again exchanged their wishes digitally, a trend that is only confirmed year by year to the detriment of SMS and voice calls, according to data collected and shared on Friday by telecom operators. As for Christmas, Proximus thus noted a strong increase in fixed internet traffic (+ 86% compared to last year, with a volume of 4,263 tera bytes). However, this figure is still slightly lower than that of a normal evening in December (4,569 TB).
With a consumption of 180,418 GB, the operator has also recorded an increase in data traffic on its mobile network compared to last year. At around 20%, it is comparable to previous years.
More than 7.3 million text messages were processed, a decrease of 37% compared to last year. The number of mobile calls, just over 2 million, was also much lower than last year (4.4 million).
At Telenet, SMS and applications like WhatsApp were once again very popular means of sending greetings. Mobile phone customers have sent 4,308,084 instant messages (-47% compared to the 8 million at the start of 2020) and used 100,277 GB of data between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. (-24%). People having stayed at home, many messages were indeed sent via the Wifi network.
Finally, on the Orange Belgium side, customers have also opted for mobile internet to celebrate the New Year with their loved ones, with an increase over one year of 24% during the night from Thursday to Friday. In all, 210.8 GB were used to send greetings in the form of photos, video calls and videos.
Voice is also losing importance, with nearly 2.1 million calls made, a decrease of just over 37%. Although there were fewer phone calls, they lasted longer on average.
Text messages confirm their loss of popularity, with a total of 5.4 million sent overnight (-42% over one year) and a midnight peak of 480 messages per second.
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