News

Andorra Telecom presented their new fibre optic features this Tuesday, changes that represent an important qualitative leap for their customers. The fundamental change is in relation to the elimination of limits on downloads for business services and a very important extension for residential customers.

For business customers, who had a download threshold with a maximum speed of 500 GB for national traffic and for 300 GB international, these limitations are being removed as of this December.

With regard to residential customers’ data traffic via fibre optics, there will also be a significant improvement from this month on. The 300 GB for national traffic and 200 GB for international included at the moment, is being increased to unlimited volume for national traffic and 500 GB for international.

Although the consumption of most users was a long way from the established thresholds, it was considered appropriate to extend them, based on several factors. In the first place, the ever more widespread use of the Internet and changing user habits which is evidenced by the growth in consumption of contents via streaming and online video games. Other factors that allow this important leap forward are the company's efforts to expand Internet output routes and capacity and the change to fibre optics, which has allowed expansion from 100 Mbps to 300 Mbps in navigation speed.

One of the particularities of Internet consumption in Andorra is the important percentage of international traffic.compared to national. Internal navigation accounts for only 21 percent of total Internet consumption in Andorra. Since the cost of international traffic is much higher, there are measures to minimise this. Thus, important services like Google or You Tube have cache memory in the country, which allows for traffic to take place locally for the most repeated content on these two platforms which also results in an improved customer experience.

Data consumption has grown tremendously over the last year. So, from January to October 2016 15.6 million data were consumed, in the same period 2017 traffic has soared to 23.3 million GB, representing an increase of 49%.

The average residential customer's monthly consumption of international traffic stands at 47 GB, a far cry from the previous limit of 200 GB and the current 500 GB. As for business customers, the average is also much lower than the previous limits, standing at 105 GB a month for international traffic.

Carles Casadevall, spokesman of Andorra Telecom, was responsible for presenting these changes this Tuesday. Casadevall highlighted the need to constantly adapt the responses of telecommunications operators to customer demands and said he was convinced that the changes would be very well received both by companies, who will have no limitations, as well as by private individuals.