Lithuanians enjoy freedom in Europe: they are browsing nine times more

Half a year ago, on June 15, new roaming rules took effect in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA) countries, and according to Telia Lietuva statistics, Lithuanians have already gotten out of the habit of calculating gigabytes and minutes when traveling - their use of minutes and gigabytes has increased several times. And yet another pleasant surprise is awaiting travellers next year.

330 terabytes - this is the amount of mobile data that Telia Lietuva customers sent in other European countries during the period from June to mid-December. Excluding the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, where Telia Lietuva customers have been using mobile connection as at home for the second year now, data usage in the EU and EEA countries has grown at an impressive pace during the last six months. Compared to the same period last year, it increased more than nine times.

New payment plans offered by Telia Lietuva had a significant impact on the increased usage, allowing using some gigabytes in all EU and EEA countries at no extra cost.

Telia Lietuva has good news for travellers: starting from 1 January 2018, the amount of free data provided with the most popular mobile communication plans in EU and EEA countries will increase by 10-33 percent. For example, starting from the following year, customers having ordered the plan 'Premium L' will be able to browse 2 GB data in the EU and EEA countries instead of the current 1.5 GB, while subscribers of the plan 'Premiums XL' will be provided with 3.1 GB of data abroad instead of the previous 2.5 GB.

'If having gone to other EU countries, Lithuanians used to send a very few pictures, e-mails or documents before, now they no longer confine themselves. We have customers who browse more than 50 GB while traveling abroad - the majority do not use such an amount of data even when at home. And based on the experience, we can boldly state that this is not the end. In the beginning of 2016, when we provided our customers with an opportunity to use mobile connection in Scandinavian and Baltic counties just like they do in Lithuania, we observed the growth which was just as impressive. During the first months, usage in these countries increased about 6-7 times; it was about 30 times greater in a year, while currently our customers send about 60 times more data than before the launch of the service', said Robertas Žudys, Commerce and Product Manager at Telia Lietuva.

According to him, not only Lithuanians traveling abroad, but also tourists and businessmen coming to our country browse the Internet more. Their data use increased more than ten times in the summer, but after the weather cooled down and tourist flow decreased, this growth slowed down.

Traveling Lithuanians are more active in both browsing and calling. The number of used minutes in EU countries almost doubled in this half-year compared to the same period of last year.

The number of received and sent SMS messages increased the least, by a mere few percent, but this trend is natural: the SMS technology, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary, has been losing popularity both in Lithuania and other countries. It is being replaced by new, more modern and convenient ways of communication, such as apps using mobile Internet that allow sending and receiving not only text messages, but also animation, photos or videos.

R. Žudys also noted that Lithuanian habits are greatly affected by their destination country and the purpose of traveling. According to Telia Lietuva data, Lithuanians browse most actively while in Sweden, Germany, Norway, Poland and France, while Latvia and the United Kingdom are leading in terms of the number of SMS and phone calls. The total duration of phone calls made in these two countries in the past six months was longer than 20 years, while the number of sent and received SMS would be enough to write about 5 thousand books of 250 pages.

Other popular routes of Lithuanians in Europe include Italy, Spain, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal and Greece.

In the summer, Telia Lietuva cut roaming prices in other 70 countries of the world. This change also led to the fact that usage increased by a few times.

'Having changed the roaming pricing in the world, the usage experienced a major change. Data usage increased from a few to a dozen times in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Switzerland and Australia. The number of calls and SMS also increased in these countries. Our customers visiting China have become more active; for the first time this country appeared in the TOP 10 in terms of the number of minutes used', says R. Žudys.

Telia Lietuva serves more than 1.3 million pre-paid and post-paid mobile service users in Lithuania.