Jakarta, 4 January 2022. PT XL Axiata Tbk (XL Axiata) has succeeded in guarding and serving customer data needs throughout the Christmas and New Year 2022 holidays. This is XL Axiata's commitment to maintaining service quality throughout the long holiday at the end of 2021, including Christmas and New Year celebrations. There was an increase in data traffic of up to 38% compared to the same period in the previous year. The highest increase occurred on Christmas Day by 7% and New Year by 15% compared to normal days. As predicted, streaming services dominate the increase in service traffic. On the other hand, legacy service traffic, namely voice and SMS, decreased by 3% compared to normal days.
Director & Chief Technology Officer of XL Axiata, I Gede Darmayusa, said, "We at XL Axiata prepared the network to serve customers during the long Christmas and New Year 2022 holidays. Based on the dynamics in the community, especially with the opportunity for people to travel and vacation, from the outset, we predicted that there might be an increase in data traffic, although not like before the pandemic. Therefore, to maintain service quality, we, among others, increased capacity up to 2x, deployed Mobile BTS (MBTS), prepared generators complete with fuel in disaster-prone areas, and prepared network diversion engineering in disturbed areas to surrounding networks.
XL Axiata data also shows the high level of digital activity carried out by customers during the Christmas and New Year holidays. Even though there are no travel restrictions, data traffic in residential areas still increases by around 2% compared to normal days. Some of the residential/housing areas that experienced an increase were mainly housing in Jakarta, Tegal, Depok, Solo, Kediri, Bekasi, Batam, Jambi, Palembang, and so on.
Of the total service traffic during the Christmas and New Year period, it was dominated by traffic from web browsing activities at 42%, social media access at 29%, video streaming at 21%, games at 4%, and others at 4%. In terms of traffic increase, game activity traffic increased by 183%, followed by file access by 24%, streaming by 11%, and web browsing by 8%.
For video call and conference activity traffic, Facebook increased by 27%, Telegram by 22%, and Line and WhatsApp by 10% each. As for social media access traffic, Instagram increased by 33%, followed by WhatsApp 30%, Twitter 19%, and Facebook 18%.
Furthermore, for music streaming traffic, Joox music and iTunes services also increased by 24% and 11%, respectively. For games, mobile legend traffic increased by 210%, then Roblox 90%, and Hago 11%.
The traffic of access to online shopping services (including Lazada, Shopee, Tokopedia) increased by 62%, while traffic to travel services (including Traveloka, Agoda, Tiket.com) increased by about 95%. And as usual, during the Long holiday, traffic to roadmap services (Google Map and Apple Map) also increased by 13%, while traffic to access to digital payment services (Dana, Ovo) decreased by almost 1%.
Currently, XL Axiata has 57.98 million subscribers and is strengthened by more than 153 thousand BTS, including more than 69 thousand 4G BTS. XL Axiata's 4G LTE network also continues to be expanded, and currently, it has reached more than 458 cities/regencies in various regions in Indonesia. XL Axiata also continues to invest in fiber networks, transmission, backhaul, network modernization, and other network upgrades to improve stability, network capacity, and data service quality in line with the continued increase in data service traffic.