Romanians spend $2m on SMS messages in several days

Sending greeting cards by mail is already passé. In Europe, the networks of mobile telephony operators have been literally besieged on Christmas Day and on New Year’s Eve by the users that chose to send SMS messages from their cell phones. Romanians also spent almost two million dollars on mobile greetings in the last week of 2003 and the first few days of this year.

On December 24, 25, 31 and on January 1, those with a mobile phone at hand sent more than 20 million SMS messages, much more than last year, according to the operators.

The number of text messages peaked, as expected, on the last day of December, when mobile phone owners sent almost 30% of the total number of the messages registered in the four days. Connex logged a record number of SMS messages sent during the above-mentioned period – eleven million. The number includes both messages sent by subscribers and by the users of prepaid cards. The number of SMS messages surged 61% as compared to last year, Connex officials told Ziarul Financiar.

The Orange network was used to send 10.5 million SMS messages, with more than 10% sent to international destinations. The peak was registered on December 31, when 3.3 million text messages were sent. “Compared to the year-ago period, we have seen a 51% growth in the total number of sent SMS messages,” Orange officials stated.

In the Zapp network, the number of text messages sent on December 25 and 51 was seven or eight times higher than usual. Also, Zapp customers sent five or six times more text messages than usual in the days surrounding Christmas and New Year’s, according to the company that operates in the CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) telephony system.

Cosmorom, the fourth-largest player on the Romanian mobile telephony market, had provided no comments on Christmas traffic by press time.

How come Romanians spent so much money on mobile greetings? These messages are generally rather cheap (seven cents at Connex and Orange, 6 cents at Zapp) and, towards the end of the year, the operators also launched promotional campaigns granting 50% discounts for some of their subscribers and prepaid card users.

Moreover, the significant surge in traffic is grounded on the soaring numbers of mobile telephony users. Orange officials announced more than one million new clients in 2003. The operator will reveal its official financial results today.

In October, Connex and Orange had reached three million customers each (Connex on October 6 and Orange on October 31). At the end of 2002, Connex had 2.635 million customers, whereas Orange had registered 2.2 million.

If you were also among those that chose SMS messages, you must have noticed that at least one message was not sent from the very first attempt. Even if the networks were not actually clogged, the mobile phone operators admit that there were some delays in sending the SMS messages. In the case of Orange, for instance, the average delay was 30 minutes.
iuliana.susanu@zf.ro