UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 14, 2017. MegaFon Ural’s users engage in 150 conversations in their instant messengers every month on average, MegaFon’s press service reports.

The number of their WhatsApp, Viber, and Telegram chats has doubled since the start of the year and exceeded 200m conversations. These data were obtained by MegaFon’s analysts from looking into their users’ online activity.

Ural users proved quite unusual in that their messenger and social network of choice are Viber and Facebook, respectively (every one in two Urals-based users prefers these services), whereas in the country on the whole, the two No.1 favorites are WhatsApp and VKontakte.

The increase in Telegram and Instagram use is currently faster than that for other services. The number of Telegram users rose by 1.5 times this year, that of Instagram users rose by a third.

All in all, MegaFon subscribers used two times as much traffic through messengers and social networks as one year previously. People now chat online more as well as use more voice traffic: the number of minutes spent talking on Viber alone has reached 300m minutes a month. This was brought about by new, unlimited-Internet-access pay plans that cover messenger and social network communication as well. MegaFon also upgraded its network capacity to be able to handle the increased load.

‘It’s important for people to feel comfortable online, so we keep on improving our connection quality and coverage. We expanded our 4G network by 50% and increased network capacity to make sure as many people can use the web and enjoy good quality speed simultaneously as possible,’ says MegaFon Ural’s Technical Director Anton Scherbakov.