Mobile phone use increasingly popular: In 2008, Austrians spent 19,626 million minutes during cell phone calls

Press release dated 29 May 2009

In 2008, Mr and Ms Austrian spent a total of 26,789 million minutes on active phone calls, some 7% more than in 2007.  While fixed line phone conversations totalled 7,163 million minutes, the share of cell phone calls amounted to 19,626 million minutes”, Dr. Georg Serentschy, managing director of Rundfunk und Telekom Regulierungs-GmbH (RTR) presented figures from the latest RTR-Telecom Monitor. He attributes the more than 15 % increase in minutes of mobile phone conversations between 2007 and 2008 to the fact that mobile phone providers increasingly launched lump sum rate products.

Mobile phone sales proceeds suffered a 3.5% decline in 2008.

EUR 3,435 million sales proceeds for mobile phone calls in 2008 fall about 3.5% short of sales in 2007.  "In spite of reduced fees for charges for service of calls among operators and of loss in roaming revenues, the fourth quarter of 2008 was the strongest period, totalling EUR 865.3 million. This is due to heavily increasing sales resulting from data services”, Serentschy describes the development in the mobile telecommunications market.

Austrians are heavy SMS users: 43% increase in 2008

A sharp increase of the use of SMS services occurred in Austria over the last three years.  “3.3 billion SMS messages sent in 2007 were 60% more than in 2006; in 2008, SMS messages totalled 4.7 billion, a more than 43% increase over 2007”, Serentschy discloses further figures and attributes this detail also to the introduction of lump sum fees for SMS services.

Further data on the fixed network, leased lines, mobile telecommunication and broadband are available for download under the following link.