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Thursday 10 October 2019 2:56 pm

Dialling down: A quarter of mobile phone users make fewer than five calls a month

By: James Warrington

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TOPSHOT - US President Barack Obama addresses a press conference with the German Chancellor after their meeting at the chancellery in Berlin on November 17, 2016. US President Barack Obama pays a farewell visit to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, seen by some as the new standard bearer of liberal democracy since the election of Donald Trump. / AFP PHOTO / TOBIAS SCHWARZ (Photo credit should read TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP/Getty Images)

A quarter of mobile phone users in the UK make fewer than five calls per month, while six per cent made no calls at all, new figures have revealed.

Moreover, around 60 per cent of those people who did pick up the phone ended the call in under 90 seconds.

Read more: Mobile shopping platform Rezolve secures bumper deal with Samsung

The figures, which came in a report from regulator Ofcom, came from analysis of roughly 150,000 Android phone users between 1 January and 31 March this year.

Overall, the number of minutes people spend chatting on the phone has increased by 12 per cent since 2012.

However, the big growth has been in data usage. Increased demand for streaming and web browsing has driven average mobile data use up from 0.2GB to 1.9GB per month – an increase of 850 per cent.

The report showed that data use peaks between 5pm and 6pm, as commuters look to catch up with news and social media.

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It also found that average call times were longest in Liverpool, where people spent almost seven minutes on an average call.

This was more than 40 per cent longer than Londoners, who came in second place with an average call time of just under five minutes.

Read more: Dixons Carphone posts slump in mobile phone sales

“As the amount of time people spend on the phone decreases, the requirement to access the internet whilst on the move to reach people increases because consumers are more frequently opting to connect with others through methods like WhatsApp, or Messenger,” said Rob Baillie, mobile comms expert at Comparemymobile.com.

But Baillie called for greater investment in areas of the UK where people are unable to access mobile networks.

Main image credit: Getty

Read more

UK economy’s growth revised down amid first-quarter spurt

Chancellor Rachel Reeves discussing UK economic strategy at a press conference podium

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