Christmas Day in the T-Mobile network 2010

Prague, 25 December 2010 – For the first time in mobile history, most of the monitored traffic values recorded at Christmas Day decreased. While traffic increased overall by more than 6.2% compared to 2009, the number of calls dropped by nearly 2.2% to 16.6 million. SMS remained the most popular way of sending wishes to loved ones. The SMS centre processed 29.6 million text messages, a year-on-year decrease of nearly 5%. The number of MMS also fell by nearly 4%.

Christmas Day is traditionally marked by a higher ratio of telephone calls made in order to wish all the best to our loved ones, though sending SMS still prevails. This year the total number of incoming and outgoing calls reached nearly 16.6 million, which is a year-on-year decrease of more than 2.2%. Out of this total, nearly 9.1 million calls were made by T-Mobile customers. Similarly to last year, the heaviest voice traffic was recorded between 10:15 a.m. and 11:15 a.m., when nearly 1.6 million calls were completed. Increased traffic was also recorded around 8:00 p.m., when people called one another to share impressions of their Christmas presents.

After a slight increase recorded last year, the total number of text messages processed by the T-Mobile SMS centre this year decreased by nearly 5% to 29.6 million. In addition to their mobile handsets, customers now use various external applications for sending SMS. The use of the latter decreased by 3% year-on-year to just under 3.6 million. However, the vast majority of SMS was sent from mobile handsets (this year over 26 million, i.e. nearly 6% less than last year). The busiest SMS hour was between 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., when the SMS centre processed more than 2.8 million text messages. During the busiest quarter of an hour, between 1:45 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., 737,000 messages were processed.

The number of multimedia messages (MMS), the use of which has been otherwise growing on a long-term basis, also decreased: while in 2009 approximately 244,000 MMS (sent from mobile handsets, external applications and the internet) were processed by the MMS centre, this year the number of MMS sent was less than 235,000, representing a decrease of approximately 4%. Surprisingly, this year the heaviest MMS traffic was recorded in the morning – between 10 a.m. and 11.45 a.m. More than 20,000 MMS sent via mobile handsets, external applications and the internet were processed by the MMS centre during this period. The multimedia-message peak was recorded between 11:30 and 11:45 a.m., when the MMS centre accepted 5,400 messages.