The lull was short-lived. At the end of an “exceptional year 2020”, in the words of Arcep, users of fixed and mobile services have resumed their old habits, again abandoning voice in favor of other modes of communication such as instant messaging or the video.
Thus, voice traffic once again fell by around 9% in the last quarter of 2021, after exceptional growth of nearly 20% in one year over the whole of 2020, undoubtedly linked to the health crisis. As illustrated by the latest figures published by the telecoms police on this subject, the Covid-19 epidemic has had an impact that could not be more positive on the state of voice communications in France.
“While mobile subscribers had stabilized their consumption for five years at around 3 hours and 10 minutes per month, this reached, during the first confinement, a level never equaled until then”, namely 4 hours and 27 minutes per month, i.e. more than an additional hour in a year, the Authority chaired by Laure de la Raudière recently announced. And if these levels – mainly recorded on mobile networks – have fallen since the end of the containment measures decreed by the public authorities, “traffic per subscriber remains at an even higher level than those observed before the health crisis”, notes the Telecom Constable.
A short-lived lull
The “Indian summer” enjoyed by voice communications may well be prolonged when these pass through mobile networks, but the situation is far from being as positive on fixed networks, which continue to suffer from growing disaffection more marked by the general public. “On fixed networks, voice consumption has never been so low,” even notes Arcep.
The health crisis has certainly led to an average increase in users’ monthly consumption of around 30 minutes (for a total of 2 hours and 17 minutes per subscriber on average in the second quarter of 2020) after long years of erosion of the time spent by the French behind their handset, this improvement did not last.
It faded from the second half of last year, during which the containment measures decreed by the government gradually relaxed. “Since then, this average consumption has never been so low”, to stand at around 1 hour and 20 minutes per month in the second half of the year, a drop of 20 minutes in about a year, notes the telecoms policeman. On the switched telephone network (RTC), condemned to extinction, the average duration of calls is now around 1 hour and 27 minutes per month in the second half of the year, i.e. a drop in calls of around 13 minutes in a year.
The end of the health crisis still had a happy consequence for operators. As Arcep notes, “voice traffic from customers of French operators who traveled abroad resumed its upward trend with the end of the limitation of certain trips, and this, for the third consecutive quarter” . Result: voice communications from abroad increased by 18% over one year, after registering a drop of 11% at the end of 2020.