69 Million SMS Messages Were Sent On Dec 31-jan 1

[Jai Dee]

69 million SMS messages were sent on Dec 31-Jan 1

Mr. Somchai Lertsutthiwong, the Vice President of Wireless Business of Advanced Info Service Public Company Limited (AIS), said people in Thailand sent about 33 million SMS messages on New Year Eve and New Year Day. The figure was higher than the figure of last year by four million SMS messages. Mr. Somchai added that 590,000 MMS messages were sent during this year’s festival, while 410,000 MMS messages were sent at the same period of last year. The usage of SMS has increased by 14 percent while the usage of MMS has climbed up by 43 percent. Mr. Somchai however remarked that more people have turned to use SMS and MMS because of the turbulence in the country. Thus, they rather sent wishes via SMS or MMS than travelling outside their residences.

DTAC Value-Added-Service Business Unit Director Pakorn Pannachet meanwhile said 29 million SMS messages under DTAC were sent during this New Year celebration, higher than the figure of last year by eight million, or approximately 38 percent. He added that the market share of DTAC has grown from 8.6 million in 2005 to 11.5 million mobile phone numbers in 2006. He said the clients are not only using the phone services of DTAC, but they are also using other applications such as downloading various contents from many different alliances of the company.

The Multimedia Services Director of True Move, Mr. Phirun Paireepairit, said seven million SMS messages under True Move were sent between December 31st 2006 and January 1st 2007, while the market share of the company has expanded to 6.8 million clients.

A total of 69 million SMS messages were sent on New Year Eve and New Year Day.

Source: Thai National News Bureau Public Relations Department - 04 January 2007

[Moruya]

A more interesting metric would be how many arrived!

Given that about 1 in 249 international phone call attempts succeeded between NYE and 2nd Jan, nowhere near 100%

[gburns57au]

Thats why it took me over an hour to finally get an SMS through to the missus.....

[londonthai]

the statistic would be interesting to know in the context of bombings - the bombers might used sms to communicate and the state requires from the mobile telephone companies to keep the record of all of them for some 7 years.

[astral]

Ah...........

Sweet 69, my favourite number.