In 2023, people in Austria sent 95 billion chat messages using their smartphones. This means each person sent about 29 chat messages every day. Klaus Steinmaurer, a top official at the Austrian Regulatory Authority for Broadcasting and Telecommunications (RTR), shared these numbers on Wednesday. In comparison, only about one billion SMS messages were sent simultaneously, which works out to one SMS every three days per person.
Austrians also sent a total of 3.8 billion emails in 2023, roughly 430 emails per person for the year. The way people use the internet has also changed. Fewer people are using slow internet connections. By the end of 2023, there were 2.68 million fixed broadband connections, and 42 percent of these had speeds over 100 Mbit/s. Another 36 percent had speeds between 30 and 100 Mbit/s. More people are also using faster fiber-optic connections, which made up 11.3 percent of all fixed broadband connections by the end of the year.