Selfies and video sharing replace traditional text messages for New Year's Greetings

Customers of BASE Company have sent 9.753.336 text messages between 8pm on 31 December and 8am on 1st January. That's 11% fewer than for New Year 2015. Meanwhile, the number of gigabytes of mobile internet used literally exploded last night. Again!

A New Year's Eve without sending good wishes is like turkey without stuffing or a champagne glass without champagne. So BASE Company's customers once again rushed to their phones to celebrate the start of 2016 and share the fun with their friends and family.

In recent years, New Year texts have tended to complement traditional greeting cards. But with the advent of the smartphone, there's a new trend emerging in mobile communication. Next to the standard message (written in a few characters) Belgians are taking more and more selfies in front of the Christmas tree or taking live videos of the New Year's Eve fireworks. 

16.888 GIGABYTES USED OVERNIGHT

This trend is reflected in the figures. While BASE Company customers sent 10,985,214 texts sending New Year greetings in 2015, this year this went down to 9.753.336 texts (between 8pm on 31 December and 8am on the 1st January). That's 11% fewer texts in a year and 28% less compared with the number sent on New Year's Eve 2013-2014 (13,424,818).

At the same time though, messages via Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter literally exploded last night. Photos, videos and instant messaging went up to 16.888  gigabytes of mobile data on the BASE Company's network (once again between 8pm on 31 December and 8am on the 1st January). That's 73% more than last year (9.710 gigabytes) and 326% more than on New Year's Eve 2013-2014 (5.170 million megabytes used). That's a record!

These New Year’s Eve figures strongly confirm the evolution we already noticed at Christmas Eve. More than 12.929 GB mobile data was used on the BASE Company network during the night of 24 on 25 December. That is an increase of 67% compared with Christmas Eve 2014. That same night the number of sent SMS dropped by 20%.

TWO OUT OF THREE MOBILES ARE SMARTPHONES

At the beginning of 2016, BASE postpaid customers who use mobile internet consume on average more than a gigabyte per month for surfing, checking e-mails, streaming their own choice of music and communicating with friends. This figure is constantly increasing.

"Nowadays two thirds of BASE Company customers have a smartphone and one in three of them owns a device that's compatible with our 4G-network. The use of mobile internet keeps growing and we are still only at the beginning.  Because of the increasing speed and the multiplication in the number of apps available, Belgians will continue to become more and more mobile in 2016," enthuses Jos Donvil, CEO of BASE.

On 31 December 2015, BASE 4G network reached 90% of the Belgian population.  Just like every New Year's Eve, our network was strengthened last night to deal with the New Year peak, able to deal with 3000 texts per second (180,000 texts per minute). 

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About Telenet Group NV/SA

BASE's credo is to offer mobile phone products and services that meet the essential needs of our customers, no more, no less. We believe that customers know themselves best, which is why we put them in control, so that they manage their mobile experience themselves. We are committed to giving them all the tools they need to do this and to guiding and supporting them, while providing them with simple, transparent services tailored to their needs. At BASE, we want to stay close to people.

BASE is a brand belonging to the Telenet Group (Belgian provider of entertainment and telecommunications services) offering mobile telephony services (calls, SMS and mobile data) throughout Belgium.

The BASE newsroom can be found at press.base.be

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