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Volume of services

Outgoing calls from local telephone networks

In Finland the number of outgoing calls from local telephone networks grew every year until the early 2000s. The total annual number of call minutes also increased all the way to the early years of the 2000s. After that time the development took a turn and the total numbers of outgoing calls and call minutes have been decreasing each year. ¹⁾ The volume of outgoing calls in 2008 represented only a fourth and the number of minutes approximately a fifth of the phone call volumes of ten years ago, that is, in 1998.

In 2008 a total of 0.9 billion outgoing calls were made from local telephone networks, whereas in 2007 they numbered slightly over 1 billion. In 2008 the volume of outgoing calls decreased by 14 per cent from the year before. Call minutes numbered just under 3.2 billion in 2008 which was 21 per cent down from the year before when outgoing call minutes from local telephone networks numbered slightly over 4 billion.

A third of calls and slightly more than half (53 per cent) of call minutes were made from private subscriptions. Dial-up calls accounted for 4 per cent of all call minutes in 2008. Dial-up minutes have decreased relatively quickly; in e.g. 2004 they represented one-third of local telephone network call minutes.

The distribution of outgoing calls from local telephone networks was roughly the same in 2008 as in 2007. One-third of the calls were local and 31 went to mobile networks. The share of long-distance calls was 9 per cent and that of international calls just under 4 per cent. Of all call minutes, local calls made up 45 per cent, long-distance calls 10 per cent, international calls 6 per cent and calls to mobile networks 23 per cent.

Services provided by the mobile communication network

The volume of outgoing calls and call minutes from mobile phones have been increasing year by year. This development continued in 2008, when a total of 4.9 billion calls were made from mobile phones. The number of calls increased by 3 per cent from that in 2007. Call minutes from mobile phones numbered over 14.5 billion, which is some 8 per cent more than in 2007.

The annual volume of outgoing calls from mobile phones has more than trebled in ten years. The number of call minutes in 2008 was 4.5 times that of call minutes in 1998.

As in the year before, slightly more than 70 per cent of outgoing calls and call minutes were made from private subscriptions in 2008. Of the calls made from mobile phones, about 90 per cent were to domestic mobile subscriber numbers, 9 per cent to domestic fixed line subscriber numbers and the remainder, roughly one per cent, to international subscriber numbers, either fixed or mobile. The distribution of call minutes was largely similar.

Similarly to phone calls, also the volume of other mobile communications services has grown each year. In 2008 sent text messages numbered close on 3.6 billion, which was 12 per cent up from the year before. The number of sent multimedia messages was nearly 38 million, which was 32 per cent more than in 2007. The total volume of data transmitted in the mobile phone network grew tenfold from 2007. In 2008 the total volume of transmitted data was nearly 4,900 terabytes, while in 2007 the total volume of transmissions was some 500 terabytes. In 2008 the majority of data transmitted, or 94 per cent, consisted of data transmitted by private subscription lines.

1) As regards the total numbers of calls and call minutes, it should be noted that, as a general rule, these statistics do not cover calls transmitted in IP networks and, consequently, not the total number of calls and call minutes made from all networks.

Source: Telecommunications 2008, Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Mervi Niemi (09) 1734 3263, Kari-Pekka Niemi (09) 1734 3399, tiede.teknologia@stat.fi

Director in charge: Leena Storgårds

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Updated 9.6.2009