REGINA – SaskTel customers are not calling or texting on Christmas Day as much as they used to. People in Saskatchewan seem to be using other avenues of technology to spread cheer around the holidays.
The crown corporation announced Monday its projecting its customers will make approximately 575,000 long distance calls on Dec. 25. Around 600,000 calls were made on Christmas Day in the previous two years.
Customers are expected to send 6 million SMS text messages Thursday. In 2013 and 2012, an estimated 8 million texts were sent on Christmas Day.
SaskTel believes numbers are falling due to more people using IP-based applications like Facetime and Skype.
READ MORE: SaskTel expecting busy Christmas Day for texts, calls
The increase in long distance calling during the holiday season may still result in some temporary SaskTel network congestion. Customers can minimize the chance of an inconvenience by avoiding the busy hours of 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Roughly 54 per cent of calls made on Dec. 25 are expected to reach outside Saskatchewan and about 6 per cent outside Canada, according to SaskTel.
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