The mobile revolution in Hungary started 30 years ago Budapest, October 15, 2020 14:00
The first Hungarian commercial mobile service was launched in Hungary thirty years ago thus we have been using mobile phones in Hungary for three decades. Three decades later the rapidly expanding data need of customers and the growing number of devices connected to the network determines the mobile market. This is why this spring Telekom launched the fifth generation mobile technology. The gigabit speed 5G service is now partially* available to customers in 23 locations.
On October 15, 1990, the analogue 450 MHz radiotelephone service was launched by Westel R di telefon (later Westel 0660) Kft., which was established as a joint venture between Magyar Telekoms legal predecessor, Mat v, and US West International. It was also the first commercial mobile service in Central Europe. This was followed in 1994 by the second generation (2G) GSM-based service launched by Westel 900 (later T-Mobile Hungary, thenMagyar Telekom)in the 900 MHz band. The GSM system, compared to the analogue service, provided customers with better quality voice, higher network capacity, the ability to send text messages (SMS), voicemail and roaming. T-Mobile was also the first to launch the 3G mobile service in Hungary in 2005, enabling the use of high-quality multimedia applications, video telephony, mobile TV and high-speed mobile internet.
The real experience of mobile internet was finally brought by the next, fourth generation (4G/LTE) service, which Telekom has been offering to customers from the beginning of 2012. This technology still plays a significant role in servicing customers, as according to NMHH's data in the 2019 Q4 96,3% of the total domestic mobile internet traffic and 25,2% of the domestic call traffic took place through 4G networks. Telekom provides high-quality 4G services in almost the entire territory of Hungary, in 3,120 settlements and its outdoor 4G coverage exceeds 99% while the indoor 4G coverage is close to 90%.
It has always been important for Telekom to make the latest technologies available to its customers as soon as possible. Therefore, shortly after its successful participation in the 5G frequency auction, the company launched its commercial 5G service in April this year, which now offers gigabit speed mobilnet* in 16 settlements at Lake Balaton and in 5 county capitals (Zalaegerszeg, Debrecen, Szeged, Kecskem t and Szombathely) in addition to Budapest and Buda rs. In addition to 5G network coverage one needs a 5G-capable device and a suitable mobile data package to use it. From September 4 Telekom offers the 5G service available in two unlimited data packages as a default service. Telekom plans to further increase its 5G coverage by the end of the year. Enabling much higher data transmission rates, low latency and connectivity to a wide range of network devices the 5G technology will offer new opportunities for both industrial use and in peoples daily lives.
The annual voice traffic is still growing on Telekoms mobile network and is expected to reach 10 billion minutes this year, while in 2015 it was approximately 9 billion minutes. The annual data traffic is growing much steeper than voice, it grew with more than eight times then it was five years ago, growing with 60% in the second quarter of this year compared to last year's Q2 data. Telekom customers have used an average of 5,5 GB of data per month so far in 2020.
The unbroken success of mobile telephony is shown by the fact that there are a total of 11,3 million activated SIM cards in Hungary today. Magyar Telekom has maintained its market leading position from the very beginning, with a market share of 44,8% at the end of 2019. The number of SIM cards in Telekoms network is nearly 5,4 million (almost 65% of them are postpaid) and the number of mobile broadband subscriptions is 3,18 million.
*Partial settlement coverage. The maximum download speed offered by the 5G service is 1 Gbps, the achievement of which depends on the availability of a device with sufficient capability and support for the given technology; i.e. whether the network supports the given speed and whether the radio and traffic conditions are sufficient.
The most important milestones of Telekoms mobile services in the last 25 years were as follows:
October 15, 1990: launch of Westel 450s analogue mobile service, the first commercial mobile service in Hungary and Central Europe.
1994: a joint venture between Mat v and US West, Westel 900 (T-Mobile from 2004, Magyar Telekom from 2006) and Pannon GSM, a Scandinavian-Hungarian company (now Telenor Hungary) launched their GSM digital service (2G) in the 900 MHz band.
1995: The first SMS in Hungary was sent on te Westel 900 network. In the last 25 years, Telekoms customers have sent nearly 12 billion SMS messages.
1999: The third mobile operator, Vodafone Hungary, enters the market.
2000: Westel 900 has more than 1 million customers.
2001: Westel launched the GPRS service, a packet-switched data service that offers mobile internet and the use of multimedia applications, offering the speed of up to 30 Kbit/s.
2002: for the first time the number of mobile phone subscribers exceeded the number of fixed telephone lines at Telekom Group; Telekom is the first service provider in the world to introduce multimedia messaging (MMS) for text, image, audio and video content.
2003: 450 MHz (0660) the analogue mobile service was phased out, existing customers were migrated to GSM.
2004: Westel took the name of T-Mobile, the official name of the company became T-Mobile Magyarorsz g T vk zl si Rt.
2005: T-Mobile launched the third-generation (3G) mobile network with UMTS system enabling high-quality multimedia applications, video telephony, mobile TV and high-speed mobile internet - first in Hungary.
