New Year revellers send 35 million texts in three hours
At a cost of up to €3.5m, the number of messages equates to eight each for every person in the country.
Meteor bosses said 5.6 million texts were sent and received on their network between 10pm on New Year’s Eve and 1am yesterday.
Based on a Meteor market share of 16%, the number of texts sent by customers of rivals at O2 and Vodafone can be estimated at 29.4 million, making a New Year’s Eve total for all three operators of 35 million.
“We are a nation of people who love to talk and text,” said spokeswoman Amanda Carroll.
Meteor said the number of messages carried on its network from December 1 until early yesterday amounted to 87 million, up 34 million or 65% on last year’s figure.
Meteor said that its network handled 14.6 million texts in the few days leading to New Year as its number of customers continues to grow.
O2 said 16 million texts were sent and received on its network between 7am on December 31 and 7am on New Year’s Day.
With mobile phones among the top-selling Christmas gifts, Ireland’s love affair with texting and talking shows no sign of waning.
Government statistics show the Irish are among Europe’s most prolific texters, while the country has 160,000 more mobile phones than people.
The latest figures available show the Irish sent 4.4 billion text messages in 2005, equivalent to 1,053 for every man, woman and child.
In terms of talk-time, the Government’s Central Statistical Office worked out that the Irish spent the equivalent of 5.7 billion minutes talking on mobiles in 2005. Put back-to-back these minutes would be enough to last 10,875 years.
