BETWEEN DECEMBER 31, 2005 and January 1, 2006, mobile phone company Optimus processed around 128 million SMS messages from its customers, almost double the amount of those sent by Vodaphone and TMN clients. The explanation for such a large discrepancy between the servers is related to the seasonal promotions offered by Optimus.
With such a record reached over Christmas, Optimus were also astonished by the number of messages they processed in 2005, especially in relation to TMN and Vodaphone.
Looking back to the Christmas period of 2004, Vodaphone increased their message processing by around 38 per cent in 2005 and had their greatest flow of messages between 6pm and 7pm on December 31. Optimus, in partnership with Grupo Sonae, put their success down to the strong campaigns they offered their customers in December, encouraging the use of text messaging from all multimedia outlets.
“It is natural that clients take advantage of our special promotions and send messages at Christmas and New Year,” said an official source from Optimus.
Since it began in 1998, Optimus has beaten various records for message processing. For example, between December 23 and 24 last, they processed 49 million messages. If you look at the figures from Vodaphone and TMN from the whole of 2005 (89 million and 110.5 million respectively), Optimus is finally up there, competing with the big boys of telecommunication.
