Merry texting sets new record

CYPRIOTS have sent a record number of SMS messages this Christmas with 13.5 million messages being sent on Christmas Day alone.
Last year, by comparison, 8.87 million text messages were sent on Christmas Day.
“It doesn’t undermine people’s use of phone calls: if they’re going to call a person they will anyway,” said Alexia Gialouridou, spokesperson for CyTA.  In fact, though precise figures were not available, CyTA was able to confirm that telephone calls over the Christmas period were roughly the same as last year.
This means that people are simply wishing more people Merry Christmas this year than has been the case in times past.  “SMS is a very user-friendly technology.  It encourages communication between people,” said Gialouridou.  This is especially the case as, with text messaging, you can send greetings to lots of people simultaneously. 
While a text message may for some people be more effort than a single phone call, it is a lot easier than 200 phone calls.
 For this reason texting was the preferred method to send greetings to people who one would not ordinarily have conveyed Christmas wishes to prior to the increased popularity of text messaging.
“A text message is easy to write and send, especially as you can send it to lots of people simultaneously,” said Gialouridou.  Overall also, texting was the most popular way to wish a person ‘Merry Christmas’ in Cyprus this year.
A total of 18.26 million texts were sent over the Christmas period, from 6pm on December 24 to 12 noon on December 26. Some  2.33 million texts were sent on the evening of Christmas Eve whilst after midnight on Christmas Day up until noon of Boxing Day 2.43 million SMS were sent. Only 4.3million text messages are sent on an average day, by comparison.
The messaging peak occurred at just before noon on Christmas Day when 465 SMS per second were being sent through the Cyprus airwaves.  During this peak period there was no slow down of service and no technical problems were experienced, making for a smooth holiday season.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.