THE message is clear – when it comes to the joys of text nobody beats the Irish.
We sent more than eight billion texts in the past 12 months, more than twice as much as our European partners.
In the 12 months to the end of March, Vodafone customers sent 4.8bn texts while O2 said its customers sent 3.2bn. In the three months to March, Meteor’s one million customers sent more than 1.3m texts.
And we haven’t stopped there, with Vodafone saying that in the first three months of this year its customers used 22% more texts and 1.5% more voice minutes than in the same period the previous year.
O2 customers sent 833m texts in the first three months, an increase of 11% on last year.
Vodafone said its Irish customers used on average 257 voice minutes each month and 200 text messages in the first three months of the year against a European average of 152 voice minutes and 89 texts.
A spokeswoman for Vodafone said anecdotal evidence from local focus groups and comparisons with other Vodafone operators would strongly suggest that the texting figures are much higher simply because Ireland is a nation that enjoys communication.
Vodafone now has 2.1m customers while O2 has 1.7m.
Meteor, which has just over one million customers, said there were over 1.3m texts sent by its customers in the three months to the end of March this year.
"We’re a country of talkers and we are now most definitely a text-nation," said a spokeswoman.
3 said that on average, between 150 to 200 text messages are sent per customer per month. The company’s overall customer base at the moment is fast approaching 500,000.
a d v e r t i s e m e n t
This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Monday, May 24, 2010
