The World Cup is now behind us and what a busy few weeks it has been. We at iBasis have kept a very close eye on our customers roaming in Russia over the last 6 weeks; we monitored all the traffic and sent post-game reports to each customer. We analyzed the flow of subscribers and data usage and even made an emergency capacity upgrade, hours before a match kicked off and just in the nick of time for our customer.
Going into the competition we did not know what to expect. Since the last World Cup we have really embraced smartphones, selfies and live streaming. Plus several networks offered a Roam Like Home proposition to stimulate usage in Russia.
we knew traffic would increase, but by how much?
Russian networks saw a doubling of inbound roaming traffic for the length of the competition.
The highest volumes of roamers were seen during the group stages. It was interesting to see that even if a team progressed, the number of fans diminished significantly after the first round. But countries, in closer proximity to Russia, rallied their fans to travel for the semifinals and finals.
However, South American fans showed confidence in their teams from the start by staying the longest in large numbers.
And what about data usage?
We saw a steady customer level increase in match time traffic as teams moved into the final rounds, with many customers approaching and exceeding their capacity.
And during the final, we doubled the data traffic compared to our previous data roaming high last summer! Showing us that, despite being on holiday, all the world stopped to watch France beat Croatia.