Roaming data traffic from winter sports grows by 50%

In recent months, Dutch travelers’ use of data while at European winter sport destinations has increased by up to 50% compared to the same period last year. Data traffic from the Alps peaked during the Christmas and spring breaks; the second week of the spring break (2/25-3/4) was the busiest week by far. This was revealed by an analysis of the mobile roaming traffic that KPN processed from popular winter sport destinations such as Austria, Switzerland, France, and Italy.

In December 2022-March 2023, KPN recorded about 50% more data traffic compared to last year. One reason for this increase, which is higher than the annual growth of data traffic, could be that we were more eager to travel. Figures show that roaming traffic has doubled compared to the winter of 2019/2020. Two years ago, the coronavirus pandemic caused data traffic to fall to almost zero.

Austria most popular
Austria is Europe’s most popular winter sport destination. We are making about the same number of calls from the Alps as we were a year ago. Call numbers peak in the second week of the spring break, which schools in both the central and north regions of the Netherlands close for at the same time. In Austria, winter-sport roaming records were broken on March 1, 2 and 3, 2023.

State of the Network
In the “State of the Network”, KPN publishes information on, among other things, trends and topical issues that are reflected in the volume of internet traffic on the network of the Netherlands. See also previous publications on topics like the effect a WhatsApp outage had on SMS traffic, New Year celebrations and the rollout of fiber.