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Christmas and New Year’s Eve were celebrated differently in 2020 – including spending more time on the phone and on the Internet.
This is according to an analysis by telecommunications provider Drei, which compared data on voice telephony and data consumption, among other things, with Dec. 24/25 and Dec. 31/1 of the previous year.
The results show that at both Christmas and New Year’s Eve, voice telephony increased by around a quarter (27 and 23 percent, respectively). Data usage was also significantly higher – at Christmas, Austrians consumed around 30 percent more data, and on New Year’s Eve it was even significantly more than a third (35 percent).
Greetings were increasingly delivered digitally
“Corona runs through all areas of life – including the holidays: Merry Christmas and New Year’s wishes were increasingly delivered digitally this year,” said Drei CEO Jan Trionow. “Due to travel restrictions, many foreign visits over the holidays this year were also cancelled, for example to family members and friends outside the country’s borders. This is also underscored by the volume of voice calls to foreign countries: this year, this was 28 percent higher than last year at Christmas, and 16 percent more calls were made at the turn of the year.”
Strong rise in Internet usage on Christmas Eve
The survey also looked at how Austrians spent Christmas Eve online. In addition to contact with other people via video call or messaging services, computer games were one of the main sources of increased Internet use. If we take All Saints’ Day (Nov. 1, 2020) for comparison, more than twice as much gaming was done on Dec. 24 (108 percent), WhatsApp usage increased by two-thirds (66 percent), while FaceTime and Zoom calls increased by more than half (56 percent) and one-third (+34%), respectively.
- Source: vienna.at/picture: pixabay.com
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