Internet Usage on the Rise During Eid al-Fitr Holiday in Indonesia

Indonesian telecommunications providers XL and Indosat have released figures on their services’ traffic during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, this according to Detik today. XL users seem to prefer using the internet or BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) over traditional phone calls and text messages (SMS) when sending holiday greetings. While Indosat’s traffic saw an increase across all its services, with data services representing the biggest growth. Here are some highlights:

XL

XL’s report showed an increase on phone call and data traffic services during the Eid al-Fitr holiday (August 19 [1]) with 4.5 percent and 19.0 percent increases respectively. XL’s SMS traffic had a surprising decline of 14.0 percent. Detik cites the president director of XL Axiata, Hasnul Suhaimi as saying yesterday, “This [trend] is in line with the increasing data usage trend such as BBM, Facebook, Twitter, or other social networking websites.”

Indosat

The report shows that compared to the June data, Indosat traffic gained an increase on all its three services during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, with voice, SMS, and data services accounting for 13.9 percent, 32.0 percent, and 26.9 percent respectively. In comparison to the Eid al-Fitr holiday report last year, the voice traffic declined by 5.8 percent. The other two traffic services, SMS and data, had good growth, with an increase of 14.0 percent and a whopping 68.1 percent respectively.

Here are some charts below to help illustrate the telecommunication usage growth in Eid al-Fitr compared to the normal days:

[Sources: Detik #1 and #2, picture: ljhookermandurah.wordpress.com]