Use of Internet Telephony Services On Rapid Growth in Finland
Up to 55% of Finns use internet telephony and video services Weekly, representing an increase of 16% in the spring of last year. Meanwhile, the use of social media services has decreased slightly. Find out more about internet telephony services in Finland below.
The Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom) has conducted a consumer survey to look into a range of questions related to Finns’ internet use.
As Finns limited in-person contact and interaction this spring, voice and video calls via applications like Teams, Skype and WhatsApp saw a surge in Popularity. The share of Finns sending Weekly instant messages on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other comparable services reached 82%, up 5% compared to last year. The slight downward trend in social media use continued despite the changes brought on by the Pandemic, with 63% now making Weekly updates. There were no significant changes in the use of video services.
The share of those working remotely is on a Weekly basis grew to 38%, up 6% on spring 2019. The figure for remote learning grew by 4% to reach 27% of all students. “The share of remote workers actually increased at a relatively moderate pace, but some of those working from home may have seen a significant increase in the amount of remote work,” said Communications Market Specialist Marja Heinonen .
The share of Finnish households with access to a mobile internet connection exceeded 90% in late spring 2020. Meanwhile, around one in two Finns had a fixed internet connection in their homes, with almost 80% using a wireless local area network (WLAN). Internet-connected devices other than mobile phones and computers could be found in 61% of households, representing an increase of 4% in spring 2019. Activity trackers and other health gadgets were particularly popular, with one in five households now owning one.
The consumer survey was carried out by IROResearch Oy. A total of 2,000 interviews with Finns aged 15 years or older were conducted for the survey. The telephone interviews were carried out in April – June 2020. internet telephony services finland
Mobile users increasingly gravitated toward internet services
By the end of 2019, the number of mobile subscriptions had decreased by 1% on the previous year, totalling approximately 9.3 million subscriptions. The number of subscriptions sold specifically for machine-to-machine communications (M2M) increased by 4% to reach 1.7 million subscriptions. Subscriptions with maximum download speeds of 100 Mbps or higher grew by 18% and totaled 4.4 million.
A comparison of the latter half of 2019 with the previous year shows a 9% decrease in call minutes and a drop of as much as 24% in the number of text messages, while mobile data volumes grew by 20%. The second half of 2019 saw 38 GB of mobile data used and 22 text messages sent per person. The impact of instant messaging services such as WhatsApp, which have gained popularity on the market since the beginning of the decade, has been substantial, especially with regard to the decline in text messages. The number of text messages sent has decreased by a total of 55% over the past five years. internet telephony services finland