Australians' data use in 2024 makes the year the biggest on record

Every day, we turn to our mobile phones to check what's happening in the world, to roll our eyes at the emails we have received and to make calls and send texts to keep in touch with friends and family.

Australian telcos have reported their 2024 usage statistics which prove just how much we rely on our mobile phones.

While many people don't favour making phone calls, there sure are still plenty of calls taking place.

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Telstra reported an average of 60 million phone calls per day, while Vodafone with less customers and perhaps a younger demographic customer than Telstra reports around 11 million per day.

That's billions and billions of calls per year.

Vodafone also reports that Fridays are the busiest day of the week, and Black Friday was the biggest day for calls this year.

Not Mother's Day calling mum, Black Friday - perhaps ringing around for a better deal.

Vodafone customers send an average of 2.9 text messages per day from a total of 2.7 billion texts across the year or around 7.6 million per day.

Telstra customers are sending 40 million per day.

These text messages are traditional SMS messages and don't count our use of apps like Apple's iMessage (those Blue Bubble messages) and other messaging apps like WhatsApp.

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Romance has turned from flowers and loving phone calls to a gushing text message in 2024, with Vodafone reporting that February 13 was the busiest day of the year for their customers - perhaps arranging dinner plans for the following day, or last-minute flowers.

Speaking of text messages, they're a common source of scams, with Optus reporting blocking a total of 165 million scam calls and text messages in 2024 so far.

From checking emails to social media, our use of data is probably the key use of our smartphones.

Every single day, Telstra reports carrying nine million gigabytes (GB) of data.

To quantify that, it's like watching an HD show on Stan or Netflix non-stop for around 342 years!

Optus' data usage report shows almost three million gigabytes of data per day totalling one billion gigabytes used in the year, while Vodafone reports their customers are consuming closer to one gigabytes of data per day now, with the 2024 average sitting at 882MB.

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Telstra expects New Year's Eve to be the biggest day of data usage in the year if previous years are anything to go by, while Christmas Eve is normally the second quietest day - with traffic returning to normal on Christmas Day.

By all reports, data usage is bigger than ever and continues to grow as we turn to our mobiles more and more for connectivity, information and entertainment.