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Still 550 calls a day to the speaking clock

On Sunday the clocks go forward by an hour and which may well leave some of us confused as to what time it is when we get out of bed on Sunday morning. It may come as a surprise to some that in these days of smartwatches, mobile telephones that give the time according to mobile network they’re on and other devices that in the home that show us what time it is, an average of 550 calls are still made each day to Proximus’ speaking clock service.

This peaks in October when the clocks go back and March when the clocks go forward.

Although the number of calls to the speaking clock has been falling steadily over the past 15 years, the service received 201,682 in the period between March 2017 and February 2018. This is an average of 16,800 calls per month or 550 calls a day.

In comparison, the service received 21,000 calls a month in 2015 and an average of 100,000 calls a month in 2010. Back in 2004 180,000 calls a month were made to the speaking clock.

Last year, the number of calls made in March (clocks forward) and October (clocks back) was 50% above average.

Fabrice Gansbeke of the telecoms provider Proximus told VRT News that "Despite the big fall in the number of calls we see that for a certain group of people the speaking clock still acts as a simple, effective and permanently available means of finding out the exact time”.

"We see that a considerable group of people use the speaking clock as the ultimate means of putting their clocks and watches right”.

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