Aussies double down on data over Christmas

This Christmas, 58 million text messages will be sent, 800,000 hours of video streamed and more than half a million overseas calls made, Telstra says.

Close to one million gigabytes worth of data will be downloaded on Christmas Day with Telstra predicting a record-breaking year for snapping selfies, sending candy cane emoticons and festive phone calls.

Double the amount of data consumed last Christmas is expected to be downloaded across Telstra's network with video calls and streaming surging on December 25.

"The data you are going to see on Christmas Day is going to people connecting to each other," Telstra's director for wireless network engineering Channa Seneviratne told AAP.

The increase has been building all year as more users connect with faster cellular data services and video becomes more popular, Mr Seneviratne said.

"The amount of data we predict to be downloaded is the equivalent of 800,000 hours of HD video in one day," he said.

Mr Seneviratne said that one driver of the data jump was video messaging and calling to loved ones overseas.

But even with a plethora of messaging applications and social media channels text messaging was still breaking records over the company's network.

"Fifty-eight million, it's a record ... pure text messaging is still very popular amongst a lot of people," he said.