Irish love to talk during festive period

TEXTS, calls and letters washed over the country in their millions for Christmas according to provisional figures.

O2 recorded 28 million text messages sent across Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, while Meteor recorded 32 million texts and 6.5 million calls across the same two days on its network.

Figures for other mobile phone providers were not available, but An Post reported that its overall postal volume doubled compared to that of last year, when the severe weather hampered delivery.

An Post spokesperson Anna McHugh said that, in the two weeks before Christmas, between six and seven million postal items a day were being handled through the various mail centres.

An Post does not distinguish between Christmas cards and other mail but Ms McHugh said there had been a 20% increase in online shopping packages that were delivered.

In addition, many families are in line for some late Christmas gifts, after a huge consignment of post from Australia was delayed.

The post only reached Britain on December 23 and, according to An Post delivery, should begin here on December 29.

While O2 reported 28 million texts across the Christmas weekend, Meteor said almost 6.5 million calls were made on its network.

Texting also proved popular with Meteor customers. A recent Meteor survey showed over 44% of Irish people aged 18-34 say they send a Christmas text every year. The end result was that 32 million texts were sent between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Britain was the country which received most calls and texts on the network, followed by Australia, which was the second most popular country for texts. Poland was the second most called country.

In addition, more than 105,000 photographs were sent using picture messaging, while 18 million megabytes of data was used throughout the two days of Christmas 2011 as Irish people shared their festive moments.

O2 also reported a huge growth in the use of social media on its phone network over Christmas.

Other countries in the top 10 Meteor list for calls included Lithuania, the US, Spain and Slovakia, while texts were sent to the same countries, as well as New Zealand, France and Italy.