Telecom: Tech-savvy Kiwis celebrate summer in style...

Telecom has revealed how increasingly tech-savvy Kiwis are experiencing iconic summer events and holiday celebrations in an entirely new way, by taking to their smart devices ‘live’ in their masses to connect, share and document personalised experiences via video and imagery as it happens.

In data released this week, the telco outlines a consistent pattern of increased data consumption each summer.

Data has skyrocketed during the 2013/2014 holiday period, with mobile data use during big summer events or holiday hotspot locations nearly doubling from usage at the same places and events the year before.

Numbers also show clearly for the first time that upload and download data consumption are increasing at a similar rate, meaning that smartphone users are increasingly contributing content online (pictures, videos) almost as much as they’re increasingly drawing content online browsing and streaming.

During the two week peak holiday period, upload and download usage has nearly doubled compared to previous years.

With an event-filled Auckland Anniversary weekend set to close tomorrow including The Color Run, The Seafood festival, the Auckland Anniversary Day Regatta and Laneways Festival, it’s a given that live moments of these highly-visual and ‘sharable’ events will have already been widely tagged and shared online.

Telecom Retail CEO Chris Quin says that while the impact of social applications such as Facebook and Twitter have already become an everyday way of life, more recent technology developments have ushered in a new era of to-the-minute social sharing by smartphone devices.

“Recent uptake of rich content applications such as Snapchat and Instagram, which harness video, audio and imagery, as well as the launch of the better, faster 4G data network are rapidly enabling more customers instant-access to the online world, which they’re jumping on in huge numbers," he says.

“The Color Run today was a great example of how people are using their mobile devices differently, as this event will have been clearly seen on just about every Instagram or Facebook newsfeed across the country.

"When events like these happen we see a huge leap in mobile data consumed per user.

“This is an incredibly exciting development. It’s awesome to see Kiwis truly maximising their technology to get more out of the experiences that mean the most to them.

"Equally, it has meant a steep learning curve as we rush to support volumes of mobile traffic five or six times what we’ve seen in previous years – sometimes well outside the generous usage increases we forecasted at the beginning of the summer.”

Some summer data highlights:

- Summer Holiday Data traffic has almost doubled since last year

- Text/SMS use has dropped by around 25% compared to the same period last year

- Data traffic at ‘sharable’ events skyrocket as people take to their smart devices

- Around 20% of data consumed is through social media applications