The Corona crisis has resulted in people talking on the phone significantly longer than before. In the past year, a cellular connection took an average of three minutes and 20 seconds and thus 35 seconds longer than 2019, as Vodafone announced on request. In the previous years, however, the duration of the average mobile phone calls had remained more or less constant.

There was a similar development at the competitor Telefónica (O2), the average mobile phone call in the first Corona year lasted three minutes and thus half a minute longer than 2019. During the Corona lockdowns in spring and December, Telefónica even reported a call time of four minutes. The third mobile network operator, Deutsche Telekom, did not provide any information.

Higher landline and internet use The pandemic also had an impact on landline use, calls via these connections lasted four and a half minutes with Vodafone in the year 2020 and thus 30 seconds longer than before. Vodafone technical director Gerhard Mack says with a look at the figures: “People 2020 have been on the phone more often and, above all, for longer to keep in touch with friends and around themselves to exchange ideas with work colleagues in this way. ” The number of mobile phone calls at Vodafone rose by almost a billion to 28 billion, the number of landline calls remained roughly the same at a good three billion.

In addition, there are calls via “VoIP” services (Voice over IP) such as Skype or WhatsApp. There are no figures for such conversations. It is clear, however, that the increase in the mass of Internet data is partly due to these services, audio and video calls via these Internet services are popular.

Data growth – “Film evenings and video chat ” Vodafone also put information on Internet use in Germany on the table. In the fixed network, the Düsseldorf company came to eleven exabytes of data (eleven billion gigabytes) last year. This corresponds to a plus of good 30 percent. In previous years, the increase in data was only around 20 percent – the Corona restrictions including closed cinemas and pubs led to the People were more at home and more online. “Most of the data rushed through the network in the evening because the good old movie night with the family was back in fashion and because we met our friends more often in video chat instead of in the pub or at home,” says Vodafone manager Mack.

The pandemic also had an impact on the mobile network: Here the data volume used at Vodafone increased by 40 percent, but in previous years it was 50 percent. The weaker value is due to the fact that people were less on the move during pandemic times and therefore used the W-LAN at home more often instead of the mobile data on their cell phones. The amount of internet data has been increasing for years as a result of advancing digitization – the more heavily used applications are becoming more data-intensive, for example because films are now more frequently streamed in high-resolution versions.

(bme)