Festive SMS Fever

February 28th, 2006

South Africans sent text messages to greet family and friends on a massive scale during the festive season, with cellphone service providers MTN and Cell C reporting a doubling in volume of SMS (short messaging service) traffic.

MTN statistics show that about 27 million text messages were carried on its network on Christmas Day, about double that sent in 2003.

More than 39 million calls were successfully connected by MTN on Christmas Day, a 35% increase over 2003.

Sending text messages was evidently no less popular a way to greet people at the turn of the year, with more than 24 million messages being carried by the MTN network on December 31, and more than 20 million on the first day of the new year.

Cell C statistics show that more than four million text messages were sent on December 24 and almost six million on December 25, compared to just over 1.5 million and about two million, respectively, on the same days in 2003.

Cell C's New Year's Eve and New Year's Day traffic doubled to more than nine million messages.

Cell C spokeswoman Happy Zondi said the figures represented messages successfully delivered.

She said sending text messages had gained in popularity: "The cellphone phenomenon is picking up very quickly, and text messages are especially popular."