Cyta-MTN SMS battle heats up in Cyprus

18 mln New Year wishes

The island’s two mobile phone operators, Cytamobile-Vodafone and MTN, carried nearly 36 mln Christmas and New Year wishes, with users clearly shifting from Cyta to MTN.
The total number of New Year wishes from Cytamobile-Vodafone users between 8pm on New Year’s eve and 12 noon on Sunday, January 2, reached 10.6 mln, down from 11.42 mln last New Year’s, compared with 10.5 mln over the Christmas period, down from 13.5 mln last Christmas.
On New Year’s Day, the total SMS messages sent by Cytamobile-Vodafone subscribers reached 7.8 mln, just short of last year’s 7.7 mln, compared to the average of 3.4 mln on any other day, also down from the daily average of 4.3 mln in 2009. However, during the first hour of the New Year, the number of messages rose to 1.6 mln from 1.2 mln same hour last year, or 437 SMS per second, compared to 333 last year.
The number of text messages sent through the MTN network on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day was 5.6 mln and on January 2 was 1.8 mln. The highest flow was recorded between midnight of December 31 and 1am on January 1 with 540,000 sms. During the Christmas holidays, the total number of text messages reached 7.4 mln.