Islander’s celebrated the arrival of 2010 with a record number of New Year’s greetings by text message over the Manx Telecom network.
New Year’s Eve, which was a Thursday, saw an unprecedented 451,000 messages being sent.
‘We believe,’ says Voirrey Barron, marketing communications manager, ‘that this is the highest ever figure for the number of texts sent in one day. On a typical Thursday, for example, we would expect to see an average of about 290,000 texts, so we feel it’s safe of say that most of the extra messages sent on New Year’s Eve were seasonal greetings.’
Islanders kept texting throughout New Year's Day to clock up a further 365,000 messages sent by midnight on the first day of the year.
Taken together, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day saw a total of 816,000 text messages being sent, compared to 632,000 during the same two day period last year.
‘Texting is now a part of life for many people,’ says Voirrey. ‘it’s helped by the fact that Manx Telecom customers now take advantage of our inclusive or free texts offers. For example, over 3.5 million free texts are sent every month by Manx Telecom Pay As You Go customers alone, making it easy and cheap for them to keep in touch.’