Mobile phone users went txt crz ovr Xms & Nu Yr

THE country went text message mad on New Year’s Eve, spending millions of euro as people sent each other simple greetings by mobile phone.

Vodafone, the country’s largest mobile phone company, reported 16.9 million messages being sent and received on its network alone.

Of those texts, two million were sent and received in the last hour of New Year’s Eve.

At an average price of 12c per text, Vodafone handled over €2m worth of texts.

Vodafone spokeswoman Darina Sexton said: “There was a massive jump in texts as there are more customers on the network now as we reached the two-million customer mark during 2005.”

The numbers of texts sent and received on Christmas Day on Vodafone network reached the 11.3m mark, the company said.

On December 31 and New Year’s Day, customers with rivals Meteor sent and received a total of 14m texts - or €1.7m worth of messages.

Meteor spokeswoman Orla Bird said: “The number of text messages on the Meteor network more than doubled. Key to this was our free Meteor to Meteor text service.”

During the festive period Meteor customers sent and received over 53m text messages across all networks - and sent 10m of these on December 31 and January 1 alone.

On New Year’s Eve, users with the O2 mobile phone network sent 10m texts worth €1.2m in all.

Emma Hynes, from O2, said: “These figures again show that the Irish love to talk and text.”