Summer sun and mobile data usage peak in holiday season hot spots
European mobile subscribers are showing signs of embracing the EU’s 2017 roam-like-home directive. Mobile data usage is constantly growing in all countries, but the Q3 seasonality of data usage coinciding with the summer holidays is particularly evident in popular European tourist destinations such as Spain, Portugal and Greece, where data usage per subscriber has spiked in both Q3 2017 and Q3 2018. One of the largest increases was observed in Spain, the most popular destination for young UK tourists, where data usage per subscriber increased by 54% between Q2 2018 to Q3 2018. This also coincided with the peak tourist season and the airing of hugely popular ITV reality show Love Island. The spikes in data usage in Q3 become evident after the introduction of the mid-2017 EU regulation that scrapped mobile roaming charges within the EU. Prior to this date most tourist markets showed little or no seasonal spike in data usage. Markets with less seasonal tourist activity also show little or no seasonal spikes.
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