Sunday is the gold standard online

(Fornebu, 2 June 2015) Sundays are Norwegians' favourite day to watch their favourite TV series online, while a murder mystery beats all previous records.

Online streaming services have never before seen more traffic than they are currently experiencing, and one in three households (35 per cent) in Norway subscribe to the Netflix streaming service. TV 2 Sumo is the country's second most popular streaming services with 12 per cent.

This is shown by the results of a survey undertaken by Norstat on behalf of Telenor.

'TV series have in many ways become the new film, and with new viewing habits that mean we follow the TV series via streaming services in addition to normal TV have led to us consuming more video online than ever before,' says Berit Svendsen, CEO of Telenor Norway.

Streaming on 17 May
Svendsen is closely watching the online habits of Norwegians, and Telenor is also finding that Sunday is the day of the week that we spend the most time on streaming services, with Saturday coming in as a solid number two. Compared with other days of the week, Sunday generate up to around 35 per cent more traffic, according to Telenor's measurements.

'Sunday evenings at around 10pm is when we see the biggest peaks in traffic for services like Netflix. This pattern is repeated every week, and the Norwegian national day was no exception even though it fell on a Sunday this year. This demonstrates that Norwegians have firmly established habits for when they stream films and TV,' says Svendsen.

Changing to online TV
For the first time, Telenor is also finding that TV dramas pull in as much streaming traffic as sport does. On Monday 27 April, Telenor recorded record levels of streaming traffic from TV 2 and in total across the broadband network. It is this spring's TV 2 series "Frikjent" that has surpassed all previous milestones.

After every episode, TV viewers were able to switch to the TV 2 Sumo service online to watch the next episode one week before it was broadcast on TV. There were record traffic levels of traffic on Telenor's broadband network when TV 2 announced that the final episode was available on TV 2 Sumo.

'After each episode of "Frikjent", we noted significant peaks in traffic on our broadband network. Many people clearly couldn't wait a week for the next episode, but it also demonstrates that the online TV is easily accessible and a well-established platform in Norwegian homes. At the same time, it is interesting to see the TV channels thinking outside the box and actively using other platforms to supplement linear TV,' says Berit Svendsen.

Growing trend
In the past, traffic records have been the preserve of major sporting events such as the Olympics, Skiing World Championships and the Football World Cup.

'TV drama is in the process of becoming just as big online as sports, which is a new trend. In addition to this, it is particularly gratifying to see that it was a Norwegian-produced drama series that managed to overhaul sport,' comments Svendsen.

For further information, please contact:
Tormod Sandstø, PR Manager at Telenor Norway.
Mobile: +47 909 43 215, Email: tormod.sandsto@telenor.com