44,000 BASE customers signed up for mobile Internet after the "FREE SURF WEEKEND"
Wednesday, February 3, 2016 — During the weekend of 3 and 4 October 2015, BASE launched the FREE SURF WEEKEND and decided to give all its postpaid customers 48 hours of free mobile internet access via 3G and 4G. At the same time, all of the prepaid customers were given an additional gigabyte of data when subscribing to the "surf and mail" option. This twin initiative was launched as part of the Surf Mobile campaign initiated by the Minister for the Digital Agenda, Alexander De Croo, to promote the use of mobile internet in Belgium. The FREE SURF WEEKEND campaign was an outright success with 44,000 additional BASE customers signing up for mobile internet in Q4.
On 31 December 2015, 65% of active mobile users connected to the BASE network had a smartphone. In the fourth quarter, the average BASE subscriber consumed 610 megabytes of mobile data per month, representing a steep increase of 85% compared to the same quarter last year (330 megabytes). The average data consumption is spiralling to 1.2 gigabyte per month when only considering subscribers who actually connect to 3G/4G and thus actually use their smartphones to surf.
This trend is being supported by BASE's 4G network, which today covers 90% of the Belgian population. In Brussels 23 new mobile sites have been deployed in 2015, mainly to improve 4G-coverage in the buildings.
