Telecom Predicts Huge Smartphone Use at Eden Park

Telecom Predicts Huge Smartphone Use at Eden Park

New Zealanders’ growing love for smartphones will show through at Eden Park on Saturday night as rugby fans in the stadium use their mobiles to share the highs and lows of the big game.

Telecom is estimating that fans will upload around 14,000MB of mobile data - the equivalent of posting more than 9,000 photos on Facebook – in the lead-up to and during the test.

Those who fancy surfing the net during the game – whether it is to impress their mates with obscure player statistics or check out what’s being said on Twitter – will download around 25,000 MB of mobile data. That’s enough to download a 30 second try reply about 3,700 times.

Telecom also expects around 150,000 texts to be sent by the crowd at Eden Park over the course of Saturday night.

Telecom Retail Chief Executive and committed All Black’s fan Chris Quin said that the numbers reflected New Zealander’s growing love of smartphones.

“More than 60% of our customers now own a smartphone of some shape or size. That number is growing substantially every year as better and cheaper devices hit the market.

“Kiwis love to show their support for our favourite sports teams, and so it comes as no surprise that we would do this over the network as well as by cheering the boys on in the ground itself. .”

Chris said that Telecom sees a huge peak in data consumption before the game begins, at half time and then again at the final whistle. Texts on the other hand are sent fairly consistently during the course of the game as fans celebrate (or debate) key moments, but tend to drop off shortly after full time.

Note to Editors

Telecom’s predictions for Saturday night are for total traffic across all mobile networks. They are based on an analysis of Telecom mobile traffic at recent All Black tests in Wellington and Hamilton, adjusted for market share and size of crowd.

ENDS

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