50,000 MMS messages in four days

The days of Christmas cards – cards, sealed in envelopes and sent by “snail” mail – may be numbered, given the large increases year on year in the number of seasonal messages sent via mobile phones. “Over Christmas and New Year’s, that is 24th, 25th and 31st December as well as 1st January, 15.7 million text messages were sent from the Orange network. Compared with the same period last year, the total number of SMS text messages increased by 50%,” Aurelian Echim, Orange Romania’s operation and maintenance manager, told Ziarul Financiar. The SMS peak was reached on December 31, with 5.4 million messages being sent, 63% more than on December 31, 2003. Significant growth was also seen for multimedia messages (MMS), a type of message which can only be sent and received by more advanced phones. Orange Romania subscribers sent 47,099 MMS messages, while the number of calls between 9 p.m. December 31 and 3 a.m. January 1 was 14,140,350, 72% more than a year ago. Total traffic increase (calls made and received) for the same interval was 55%. ZF