Submitted by Mike Grenville on Sun, 04 Jan 2009 21:41

Once again sending an SMS to greet friends and family as the new year strikes has become even more popular with huge increases in volumes reported in countries around the world.

Since it is not possible to have all your friends and family with you at midnight, so sending and SMS is increasingly becoming the way to send round new year wishes. As the practice takes hold, this year has again since huge increases in message volumes by mobile operators who have increasingly taken steps to ensure that their networks are able to handle strain.

In the UK O2 announced a record 166 million messages were sent over its network in a 24-hour period ending at 7.30 am on New Year’s Day 2009, an average of 1,900 messages sent every second. Some of these messages were treasured as over 16 million text messages were saved by O2 customers using O2 Bluebook, which backs up phone numbers and automatically saves every text and photo message online.

Over in Ireland O2 customers sent 21 million texts in the 24-hour period between New Year's Eve at 7am and New Year's Day at 7am, according to the Irish Independent. Altogether more than 41 million messages were sent by Irish mobile users on the last day of the year. This is nearly three times the 15m that were sent on New Year's Eve in 2003.

Over 4 million Irish people have a mobile phone, with 7pc of subscribers having one or more mobile subscriptions. The newspaper report that Irish mobile phone subscribers generate more revenues than any other country in Europe, with the exception of Switzerland.

Swiss mobile users sent 106 million SMS and MMS messages on 31 December 2008 and 1 January of this year, up from 100 milliion last year. This was spread between Swisscom users who sent 47.6 million SMS and MMS, Orange 27.8 million with Sunrise claiming 29.1 million SMS (no MMS stats). This works out at 14 messages for every man, woman and child in the country.

In Belgium across operators Base, Proximus and Mobistar 78.3 million SMS were sent between the 8pm 31st December and 8am on 1st January 2009. This made up with 18.7 Million SMS sent on Base, a 44% increase on last year, 36 million on Proximus up 27% and 23.6 million on Mobistar up 30.4%.

There were 360 million SMS sent in France. Orange/France Télécom sent more than 149 million SMS on 1st January about 30% more than last year. However this increase was more than doubled by SFR subscribers who sent 131 millions up 62% and 80 millions and increase of 47% through Bouygues Telecom. From its lower base MMS showed even greater increases in France with 1,75 million through Orange up 37.7%, 1.,68 million on SFR up 49% and 600.000 for Bouygues Telecom up 60%.

Over 14 million text messages were sent on New Year's Eve by the subscribers of Bulgaria's two largest mobile phones operators. Bulgaria's largest mobile phones operator Mtel said that its SMS traffic came to about 9 million messages between 10 pm on December 31 and 12 pm on January 1. Globul subscribers sent 5 million SMS between December 31 and noon on January 2.

In Thailand The Bankok Post reported that AIS said that on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, its users sent about 50 million SMS and about a million MMS. DTAC counted about 39 million SMS and 4.6 million MMS on the two-day festive holiday, 27.13% and 35.32% more than last year.

In Australia Telstra forecast that its customers would send more than 46 million text messages across the nation on Christmas Day and 700,000 MMS. Telstra Consumer Executive Director Jenny Young said this was "a 35 per cent increase over last Christmas and double the number sent on a normal day, with MMS up 40 per cent on last year".

Australians will welcome in 2009 by sending up to 1,000 text messages a second, with more than 76 million predicted to be sent as part of the New Year festivities - the highest number ever.

"Last year we forecast 53 million text messages, but our customers sent nearly 10 million more. This year, we are expecting a 23 per cent increase on that figure, so we are busy making sure our network is ready for the expected surge in traffic," Ms Young said.

Sadly not everyone will get the messge they were hoping for. Research commissioned by Telstra found more than one third (34.63%) of Australian mothers will miss out on being contacted by their child/children this New Year's Eve/Day, despite 98.69% who want their children to contact them. 10.56% of males will SMS their mum on New Year's Eve/Day compared to 16.71% of females.

Previous New Year Messages

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003