Statistics from Hajj 2019 (1440 H)

The Saudi Arabian Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) has released the statistics for mobile data & voice calls from Hajj this year. While the majority of activity is centered around Makkah (Mecca), Medina (Madinah) becomes highly active too. To give an idea of why this is important, see this picture below

The city of Makkah is always full of people but during Hajj time, around 4-5 million people gather in a small area. This is the most challenging network deployment because people are always on their smartphones, talking, live streaming, video calling, etc. There is also no end time. This continues generally round the clock.

Here is the summary of stats from CITC announcement:

The use of Information and Communication Technology  services (ICT), during this season of Hajj 1440-2019, witnessed  a significant rise; the average number of subscribers reached nearly 7.4million per day, the number of voice calls exceeded 309 million hours, and the total data consumption during the entire season exceeded 30.2 thousand terabyte, with a rise  of 26% compared to last year, according the statistics issued by CITC about the ICT services consumed in Makkah Almukarramah, Al Madinah Almunawarah and Holy sites throughout Hajj season 1440-2019.

Implementation of daily measurements showed that the Internet average download speed is 44.83 Mbps in Makkah Almukarramah with a rise of 69% compared to last year. While in Madinah it reached 48.14 Mbps with a rise of 54% compared to last year, due to availability of advanced infrastructure for communication networks and massive increase of their capacity.

In an earlier announcement CITC had said:

The statistics also included average of daily data consumption per person; the average rate reached (299.12 MB / subscriber) compared to daily global data consumption rate per person (180  MB / subscriber), noting that the most popular applications are  (in order): YouTube, Snap Chat, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram.

The statistics additionally mentioned that average Internet download speed reached (45.61) in Makkah, achieving an improvement rate of (71.79%) compared to last year.  The number of domestic calls reached (22.7 millions)  while  international calls reached (7.6  millions  ) with success rate of 99.06%.

Note that the two pics above are from CITC tweet below.

the ICT performance indicators during #Hajj2019. Explore more .. pic.twitter.com/8rY0rUuifA

— هيئة الاتصالات وتقنية المعلومات (@CITC_SA) August 14, 2019

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