Magyar Telekom Tavkozlesi Nyrt : Six fold increase in a year of roaming data usage by Telekom’s residential customers

Budapest,July 22, 201611:00

• An increase of close to six fold of roaming data usage and close to threefold of initiated roaming voice usage has taken place in the residential customer pool relative to last June.
• The largest proportion of roaming voice usage is taking place in Germany, followed in order by Austria, Italy, France and Great Britain.
• The rank in roaming data usage is: Germany, Austria, Italy, France and Croatia.
• In France, customers telephoned four times more minutes this June than they did in the same period last year, whereas the increase is even more significant with regard to data usage.

Roaming voice and data usage has gradually increased in the recent years among Telekom's customers. Similarly to domestic usage the increase in roaming of data usage has significantly exceeded that of voice usage. The increase has been close to six fold in roaming data usage and close to threefold in initiated roaming voice usage by Telekom's residential customers compared to last June. However, outbound text messaging has slightly dropped relative to the same month of the previous year. The increase in roaming voice and data usage of this scale has been greatly attributable to the implementation of the EU Plus option available for Telekom's residential customers with Next tariff packages since May 2015. This is evidenced by the fact that over the past three years roaming voice and data usage was the highest in the second half of 2015.

Roaming usage is typically highly seasonal. Summer vacations and cruises send roaming usage to its peak in July and August. To a lesser extent though, September and October are still stronger than the annual average in terms of roaming usage. Roaming usage is at its lowest in the winter months. Telekom's residential customers roam the most in Germany, followed by Austria, Italy and France. The fifth in row in roaming voice usage is Great Britain and Croatia in roaming data usage. Thanks to the Hungarian tourists visiting the country in the summer season Croatian roaming usage multiplies in July and August compared to that of other months.

In France, in June this year, customers telephoned four times more minutes than they did in the same period last year, but only a part of this can be attributed to the European Football Championship, as multiple growth has also taken place in other countries as well. As regards data usage, however, growth has been even more significant than that in France. Over the past year, Telekom's residential customers roamed in 173 different countries, including such exotic countries like Malawi, Swaziland, El Salvador or the British Virgin Islands.

A similar trend can be observed among small-business customers as well; increasingly more of them venture to use their cell phones abroad. Among small-business subscribers the number of business customers who sent text message or initiated a phone call from abroad was 1-2 percent higher than in the previous year. The number of those surfing the Internet abroad also increased dramatically at the same time: it was higher by 84 percent in May and by almost 80% in June than a year earlier. The background to the increase has been the packages that ensure increasingly favourable roaming rates, among them the Next Business Comfort tariff package introduced for small businesses in April, which simultaneously provides the experience of unlimited telephone calls and carefree mobile internet surfing abroad as well.