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The pace accelerated further from 56-57% in the previous two quarters as the coronavirus pandemic could have pushed up turnover.

Some 94% of data traffic took place on 4G/LTE networks.

The number of mobile calls was up 3.8% from a year earlier at 2 trillion in Q1 although it continued to drop in a quarter-on-quarter comparison now for the third quarter. The time spent on those calls rose 6.8% to 6.3 billion minutes. Per subscription, on average 5.5 minutes of calls were made per day.

Both the number and the time of mobile calls to the landline network rose, by 15% and 17%, respectively, year-on-year. Part of the steep increase could reflect the changed contact habits with the pandemic, KSH noted.

At the same time, mobile users sent 464 million text messages in the first quarter, 2 million less than in the base period and 16 million less than in Q4 2019.

The number of calls from landline phones dropped further, by 7.4% year-on-year to 157 million, but the time of those calls rose 2.2% to 922 million minutes, in the first rise in several years.

There were 12.64 million mobile phone subscriptions in Hungary at the end of March, 430,00 more than a year earlier and 101,000 more than at the end of December.

The number of subscriptions per 100 inhabitants rose to 129.4 from 124.7 in Q1 2019.

There were 3.2 million landlines at the end of Q1, 0.4% less than a year earlier but slightly up from the previous quarter.