Russians who prefer eSIM to a standard SIM card use traditional voice communications less but spend much more Internet traffic, especially in roaming. At the same time, the largest share of digital SIM card users are among millennials, but in terms of the volume of traffic consumed, zoomers are now in the lead. MegaFon experts came to this conclusion after examining anonymous subscriber data for June-August 2022 and 2023. The company’s press service reported this.
MegaFon said that today more than 98% of subscribers with eSIM use it as their main SIM. On average, a standard SIM card user speaks 15% more per month than a Russian with an eSIM.
Subscribers using eSIM have become much more active on the internet in the past year. Although their mobile traffic consumption in 2022 is almost no different from that of customers with regular SIM cards, the first group now spends 17% more on the internet than the second group. In roaming, digital SIM card users not only consume 1.7 times more Internet traffic than other subscribers, but also spend 61% more time on calls.
Among services, the company found that Russians with regular SIM cards spent more gigabytes on video and music alone than eSIM users. However, as MegaFon explains, this gap is rapidly narrowing and currently reaches only 3%, although a year ago this figure exceeded 20%.
In all other categories, subscribers with a digital SIM card are much more active: they spend 26% more traffic on social networks and 26% more on instant messengers.
20%, and for web browsing – 6%.
Additionally, eSIM users are 2.7 times more active when using cloud services.
As Igor Glebov, director of MegaFon’s development department, explains, eSIM is actually a regular SIM card, the chip of which is built into the smartphone at the production stage.
“It is easy to explain the popularity of eSIM that we see: it cannot be broken or lost, it allows the subscriber to have an additional number on a device that supports this technology, for example, one is used for work, the second is used for work. Personal life. This is especially true for iPhone users who don’t have more than one slot for a regular SIM card. Additionally, if the smartphone is password protected, if it is stolen or lost, the attacker will not be able to remove the eSIM and
use banking services, for example,” added Glebov.
According to MegaFon, zoomers (aged 17-25) rank second in terms of audience with 25%, and rank first in terms of volume of content consumed via eSIM (40%).
vs. 39.5% of total traffic for millennials).