Optus had a busy Christmas/New Years but we’re making less calls

The Christmas/New Years break in Australia is a busy time for everyone, and we like to connect with those who are far away. Optus has just released their usage report for the period and Aussies are connecting more and more each year.

The scale of calls made and SMS messages sent during these two days is pretty staggering, but the Optus network performed extremely well.

From the numbers it looks like we say a bit more at New Years, than Christmas, and we like to text rather than call. And, it looks like our messaging/social media app of choice is SnapChat and WhatsApp, with Facebook Messenger presenting a respectable third.

Down to the numbers, Optus said we sent 46.8 million SMS’s on Christmas day, and 64.3 million SMSs at New Years. This is an increase on both days from last year, specifically 2.6% more than we sent at Christmas, and more than 19% more than we sent at New Years last year.

We’re calling less, with Optus seeing a drop in volume for calls on both Christmas (down 2.6%) and New Years Day (down 6.9%). Aussies still called each other though, with 24.7 million Mobile calls made on Christmas day and 65.3 million Mobile calls made during the New Years period from 3pm 31/12 to 3pm 1/1.

While Optus is seeing a drop in customers calling in Australia, internationally it’s a different story. Optus customers made 4,165,432  minutes of calls on Christmas Day, while we spent 3,926,635 minutes chatting to friends and family at New Years. Where did we call internationally? Well, India, the United Kingdom and New Zealand are our top 3 places to call.

Over 8 million minutes of calls, almost 90 million local calls and over 100 million SMS’s sent…in two days. That’s a lot of traffic, and with no major outages. Nice work Optus, and happy new year.