Ho Ho Ho it’s Christmas Day, and while most people are spending it with their families, spare a thought for those stuck at work – like the Telstra team who are ensuring the infrastructure is ready to connect you with those you love.
Telstra will be connecting their customers today and tomorrow with free Calls from home phones, and pay phones across Australia, but they’ve got a pretty big job today. Telstra says that on their 4GX network, Australians will today :
- Download 1600 TB of mobile data (80% increase on Christmas 2016)
- Make 45 million calls from mobiles (15% increase on Christmas 2016);
- Send 48 million text messages (similar to Christmas 2016);
- Send 650,000 text messages to loved ones overseas – more than double the number sent on a typical day;
- Send more than 500,000 1:1 messages on the Telstra Messaging platform launched in October this year;
- Last year, the peak hour for sending SMS messages was 10am-11am with over 4 million text messages sent by Telstra customers.
That’s a lot of data, calls and SMS’s.
Channa Seneviratne Telstra’s Executive Director, Network and Infrastructure Engineering said
Christmas is a special time of the year to connect with family and friends. We have seen data usage on our mobile network continue to grow throughout the year and we predict that trend to continue when compared to Christmas data usage last year.
Nine in 10 Australian mobile phone owners now use a smartphone and the popularity of instant video capture applications like Instagram and Snapchat, as well as increasing access to high-speed 4G and 4GX technology, is helping to bring families and friends closer at Christmas even when they are celebrating the day apart.
If you need to contact someone today or tomorrow you can get free calls Australia wide on Telstra home phones, as well as through Pay Phones around Australia (if you can find one).
Most Telstra plans have unlimited talk and text nowadays. It’s a fun Christmas event but not much of a bonus for me!