They came, they partied, they phoned

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?EVENT-goers used around 374,181 voice-calling minutes over the course of the Rhythm and Vines festival, the equivalent of 130, 12-hour days.

From Thursday December 28 to January 1, Spark recorded a total of 202,181 voice-calling minutes during the event and Vodafone recorded 172,000 minutes.

The number of SMSs (short message service) carried on the R&V Vodafone COW (cell site on wheels) between December 29 and January 1 was 159,709.

When added to Spark’s 347,915 SMSs, or texts, it makes a total of 507,624 texts sent over the period from December 28 to the early hours of January 1.

Vodafone hit a peak for data volume right after midnight on New Year’s Eve, totalling 83 GB (gigabytes).

A total of 4.34 TB (terebytes) of data was generated, which is equivalent to about 2000 hours of video streaming.

This figure is more than twice that of last year’s data volume while 87 percent of the data was carried on 4G, said Kathy Gieck of Vodafone’s external communications team.

Festival-goers used enough data over the course of the festival to watch more than 45 million high-definition one-minute videos, said Lucy Fullarton of Spark.

This was just an estimate but it would be a lot more for low-definition video, she said.

Lenska Papich, of 2degrees, said calling and data use on the 2degrees network exploded in Gisborne during Rhythm and Vines.

“This year, voice traffic spiked by hundreds of percent, as did data, when compared to average usage patterns,” she said.

One festival-goer experienced difficulty using his 2degrees 4G data during the festival despite the fact he had service.

“I wasn’t able to connect to the internet when I was out there. I had bought 2GB of data especially so I could keep in contact with friends, and while it showed that I had service and that 4G was connected, nothing would load. Texts were also very slow to send.”

Other cellphone users in the Gisborne area noticed a shortage of coverage, with phones going straight to voicemail.