Behind the scenes
Galaxus Mobile is the lowest-priced provider for 30 days of data roaming in Europe and one year worldwide
by Stephan Kurmann
Major differences in how Galaxus Mobile customers use data
2.5.2024
Translation: Katherine Martin
Our Galaxus Mobile plans have now been on the market for an entire year. In honour of the service’s first birthday, we’ve conducted a detailed analysis of our customers’ data usage. The results reveal that men surf the net significantly more than women, with customers under the age of 30 using four times more data than silver surfers. Those with the greatest appetite for data, however, are users from the Italian-speaking region of Ticino.
Rewind to 1 May 2023. Galaxus Mobile has just gone live, relegating digitec connect to the history books. As well as a new name, the service has been given a new set of prices – low prices that’ll stay low. Thomas Peter, the man in charge of mobile plans at Galaxus, explains: «We wanted to get out of the discount battle we were part of and which is so typical for the industry. Instead, customers now always get a very good price, no matter when they subscribe to their plan. We also place a lot of importance on the service package as a whole, which includes providing an easily reachable, helpful customer service team.»
But how well have the online shop’s mobile plans gone down with Switzerland’s population? And how do different generations, genders and language regions use their mobile data?
New plans, new customers
In 2023, 206 % more people signed up to a mobile plan with Galaxus than in the previous year. This is despite the fact that sign-ups to the now-defunct digitec connect plan declined between January and April. From May onwards, the number of customers opting for a new Galaxus Mobile plan went through the roof. When the months of May through December 2022 are compared with the same period in 2023, customer growth reaches as high as 248%.
The average Galaxus Mobile customer is male (57 per cent of our mobile customers are men), 40 years old and uses an iPhone. 1 in 2 customers use their plan on an Apple device, while a further 25 per cent are Samsung smartphone users.
How do we know that? By looking at the IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity). Uniquely assigned to each mobile device, this code is used to identify the type and manufacturer of any device used on a network.
Men much likelier to surf the net on their phones
According to this year’s figures, the average user consumes about 5.8 GB of data on their smartphone every month. Men in particular are active on YouTube, Netflix and similar platforms – they even smashed the 7 GB data usage mark in March.
Female customers’ average data usage is still hovering just under the 5 GB mark.
To give you an idea of how much that is, watching YouTube for one minute consumes around 15 MB of data, listening to music for one minute on Spotify uses up 1-3 MB and a WhatsApp message consumes 0.2 MB.
Given these figures, it’s not surprising that almost 90% of Galaxus Mobile customers have gone for a plan with unlimited data.
Youngsters guzzle data like mosquitoes guzzle blood
Children and young adults up to the age of 30 use significantly more data on their smartphones than the average customer – almost 8 GB on average, in fact. That’s over 2 GB – or about a quarter more – than the 30 to 40-year-olds.
Silver surfers come last in the data usage rankings, with women and men over 60 using just over 2 GB of data per month. That’s almost four times less than the under-30s.
Ticino: a net-surfing hotspot
Our Italian-speaking customers make the greatest use of their data allowances. Ticino residents use 1 GB more per month for Instagram, Spotify and the like than their German- and French-speaking compatriots. German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland are almost on a par with each other, averaging at around 5.8 GB per month.
Is your data consumption above or below the Swiss average? Which app do you think swallows up most of your monthly data allowance? Let us know in the comments!
Header image: Shutterstock
Tobias Heller
Communications Manager
Tobias.Heller@digitecgalaxus.chSmartphone
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