Australians are calling more, texting mid-week, and streaming their way into the weekend – with new mobile data revealing just how deeply daily habits are now shaped by the small screen in our hands.
Across 2025, Australians made nearly four billion phone calls, sent 6.7 billion SMS messages, and consumed a record 849 million gigabytes of mobile data – the equivalent of almost 388,000 years of continuous streaming.
The annual Vodafone Unwrapped report paints a granular picture of how the nation connects – not just how much, but when, where and why.
“Vodafone Unwrapped is a fascinating look at how Australia connects. The numbers show Aussies love staying in touch over our mobile network, which doubled in size this year, now covering more than one million square kilometres,” the company said.
“In 2025, customers sent 6.7 billion texts and placed nearly four billion calls. Thursdays were the nation’s biggest messaging day, while October topped the charts for phone calls in the lead up to the holiday season.”
For brands, planners and platforms alike, it’s a clear behavioural roadmap.
The great Australian phone call isn’t dead
Despite years of predictions about the death of voice, Australians spent 9.9 billion minutes on phone calls in 2025 – the equivalent of 18,955 years talking.
Nationally, there were 3,910,174,175 calls, but New South Wales dominated as the country’s most talkative state.
October emerged as the busiest month for calls nationally – a clear signal of rising coordination and commerce in the lead-up to the Christmas retail and travel rush.
Thursday is Australia’s unofficial texting day
Australians may live on apps, but SMS is still moving at an industrial scale – with 6,733,456,946 texts sent in 2025 alone.
One of the most striking behavioural patterns: Thursday is the busiest SMS day in every single state and territory.
For marketers, Thursday now stands out as the quiet king of direct-message attention — ahead of weekend distractions.
Fridays belong to streaming, scrolling and switching off
Mobile data use surged to a new national record of 849,400,180 GB in 2025, driven by streaming, gaming, social video and always-on work habits.
Friday was the busiest national day for data usage, underlining Australia’s entrenched “stream into the weekend” behaviour.
The state-level nuances tell their own story: WA leads data on Mondays, Tasmania peaks on Sundays, and NSW alone accounts for almost 40% of all national mobile data usage.
Why these habits matter to brands
The real value in the data isn’t the scale – it’s the rhythm:
• Thursday is messaging day
• Friday is video and streaming night
• October is peak coordination month
• NSW sets the national pace
For advertisers, platforms and media buyers, this kind of behavioural certainty sharpens:
• SMS campaign timing
• Streaming-heavy media planning
• Day-part creative strategy
• State-by-state media weighting
For Vodafone, the data also doubles as proof of relevance at a national scale, with its network now spanning more than one million square kilometres after doubling in size this year.