Christmas eve 2016 in the T-Mobile network

Christmas Eve traffic in the T-Mobile network decreased again as compared with the previous year. Traffic clearly moved from “standard” calls and text messages to data. The total number of calls reached the level of an ordinary Saturday, declining by 5% year-on-year to approximately 17 million. For the first time in history, the number of text messages decreased: the T-Mobile SMS centre processed 27.7 million messages containing Christmas wishes, which is 6% less than in 2015. The only areas that saw growth were data and multimedia messages: the MMS centre received 562,000 MMS, which is 13.4% more than last year. As compared with the previous year, the growth of data usage slowed down, with data traffic rising by 65.5%.

The total number of incoming and outgoing calls reached nearly 17 million, which is 5% less than in 2015. Distribution of calls over the given period remained the same as in previous years: the heaviest voice traffic was between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., when more than 1.9 million calls were made.

The total number of text messages processed by the T-Mobile SMS centre on Christmas Eve decreased by 6% to 27.7 million. The busiest hour for SMS was again between 10:15 a.m. and 11:15 a.m., when the SMS centre processed more than 2.7 million messages.

The number of multimedia messages (MMS) reached nearly 562,000, which is approx. 13.4% more than last year. The heaviest MMS traffic was between 12:45 p.m. and 1:45 p.m., when the MMS centre processed more than 52,600 MMS sent via mobile handsets, external applications and the internet.

Data traffic increased by approx. 62.6%. While traffic in the 2G and 3G networks declined by 18% and 33%, respectively, traffic in the fastest 4G (LTE) network went up by a full 128%. The highest data consumption was reported between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., after Christmas presents were opened.