41m texts sent to welcome in 2008
Vodafone, the country’s largest mobile phone company, yesterday said its network was the busiest ever as its customers sent about 13.5m texts on December 31.
O2, the second biggest operator, said 12m texts were sent by its customers between 7am on New Year’s Eve and 7am yesterday.
Meteor customers sent 15.4m messages on New Year’s Eve, making an estimated total of 40.9m new year texts sent by revellers.
“Text messages were the preferred channel for sending greetings on Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve with an all-time combined high of 27m texts sent by Vodafone customers,” said spokeswoman Darina Sexton. Vodafone also revealed the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York was the biggest-selling festive song downloaded onto mobile phones. Last month, the BBC tried to censor the song’s reference to “faggot” and “slut”.
But the broadcaster had to relent after complaints over “political correctness gone mad”.
Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas came a close second on the mobile phone company’s download charts.
Appropriately for a year in which the rain never seemed to stop, the most popular downloaded song of 2007 was Rihanna’s Umbrella, according to Vodafone.
Meteor, which is Ireland’s third-largest phone company with 18.4% of the market, said 107m texts were sent in the nine days between Christmas Eve and January 1.
“The busiest hour was between midnight and 1am on New Year’s Day when over 1.5m texts were sent wishing loved ones all the best for 2008,” said Meteor spokeswoman Gina Kelly.
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