Danes put their phones away during Xmas Eve dinner

Mobile data traffic has skyrocketed in Denmark this year

Lucie Rychla

Figures from several Danish telecommunications companies have revealed that the Danes put their mobile phones away during the dinner on Christmas Eve this year.

Telia, TDC and Three registered a significant drop in the use of mobile phones between 5-10 pm on December 24.

“Other days we see only a small dip around dinnertime,” said Jens Aaløse, the chief customer officer at TDC.

“But on Xmas Eve we set our mobile phones aside to focus on being together and look each other in the eye.”

The telephone operating company Three, which has 1.2 million customers in Denmark, has reported that the Danes made 6.9 million phone calls, sent 13.8 million SMS and used 560,200 gigabytes of data on the first day of Christmas.

People called or texted mostly during the midday hours, while the mobile data traffic was busiest from 11 pm to midnight, according to Three.

READ MORE: New Danish mobile phone service kicking off price war

Phones at Xmas dinner not acceptable
The figures correspond to results from a survey by YouGov for Telia carried out before Christmas, which found that 70 percent of Danes do not think using a mobile phone during the Christmas Eve dinner is acceptable.

Some 62 percent do not think people should even use their mobile phones to film others carolling and dancing around the Christmas tree, which is a popular Danish tradition.

A Megafon survey conducted ahead of the Christmas weekend also revealed that the majority of Danes (30 percent) planned to check social media 1-2 times on December 24, while 19 percent wanted to browse their Facebook or Twitter feed 3-5 times during that day.

Meanwhile, some 3 percent planned to be glued to their phone and check their social media accounts more than 30 times.

READ MORE: Social media event shows that Danes love Facebook but lag behind on Twitter

More mobile data traffic
As more Danes buy smartphones, tablets and home broadband routers, the use of mobile data skyrockets in the country.

According to a new report from the Danish Energy Agency, the mobile data traffic increased by 81 percent in the first six months of 2016 compared to the same period last year.

Similarly, the number of households with a fixed-broadband with a minimum speed of 100 Mbps grew by 41 percent to 310,000, while broadband subscriptions with a minimum speed of 50 Mbps increased by 34 percent to over a million.

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