MTC Namibia's SMS traffic soared over the festive season, with traffic exceeding the one-billion-mark by year-end. The year-on-year SMS traffic saw a significant increase, with volumes growing 105%, from 714 503 333 messages in 2006, to 1 467 296 463 in 2007, the company says in a media statement.
MTC Namibia says it transported 192 702 359 messages in December 2007, a 115% jump from 89 527 225 messages in December 2006.
SMS traffic on Christmas Eve amounted to 1 948 537 SMSes, indicating a 66% increase from the 1 171 516 messages transported on the same day in 2006, notes the company.
On New Year's Eve, the company transported 2 350 716 messages, a 121% jump from 1 171 516 on the same day in 2006.
"These figures illustrate that the billion SMSes handled barrier was exceeded by far," it says.
MTC Namibia MD Miquel Geraldes says the company has made significant investments in its network for applications like SMS delivery platforms. That's why all SMSes were delivered successfully without any network congestion experienced, he adds.
"We, however, acknowledge that no network provider worldwide is spared the challenge of queues building up at peak periods, but we are performing very well against all key indicators of quality and service."
Regional growth
The strong growth of SMS traffic is in line with projected SMS growth globally and in Africa. Global analyst firm Gartner predicts 2.3 trillion messages will be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008, a 19.6% increase from the 2007 total of 1.9 trillion messages.
Mobile messaging revenue across major markets will grow 15.7% in 2008, to $60.2 billion, up from $52 billion in 2007, it says.
Africa is expected to see sustained healthy growth, and the low price of SMS compared with voice calls makes it an ideal service in countries where people have low buying power, says principal research analyst Stephanie Pittet.
Asia/Pacific and Japan are the biggest consumers of mobile messaging, says Gartner. The analyst firm predicts 1.7 trillion messages will be sent in 2008 in that region.
Volumes of short messages and picture messages will increase, but growth rates are expected to slow in line with the saturation of mobile connections, it says.
Volumes of photo messaging will start to stall in the next few years as users increasingly share photos through mobile communities and social network portals rather than sending them directly to one another, it notes.
Gartner estimates 189 billion mobile messages were sent in 2007 in North America, and this is forecast to reach 301 billion in 2008. "The market is being driven by increased penetration of users, more frequent usage of peer-to-peer messaging, and unlimited and bucketed messaging plans," says Tole Hart, research director at Gartner.
Mobile messaging usage has increased in all Western European countries, and the growth in the number of messages sent is projected to continue until 2010. A total of 202 billion mobile messages were sent in 2007 in Western Europe, and this is forecast to reach 215 billion in 2008.
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