Happy New Year via mobile phone in South Africa

Mobile calls, SMS, and MMS were used to ring in the New Year in South Africa and other parts of the world. Did you make or receive some kind of holiday greeting through your mobile phone? And did you exchange greetings with someone you would consider very close, somewhat close, or an acquaintance?

SOUTH Africans have become a nation of electronic greeters, with more than 1,5-billion cellphone text messages sent over the recent holiday season.

MTN alone handled 1,17-billion SMS messages over Christmas and New Year, almost double the number it carried last year. But fast fingers and thumbs have not completely replaced the more personal touch of a phone call, with MTN reporting a 46% rise in voice calls from last year to an astonishing 1,87-billion calls during Christmas and New Year.

....

Other countries also reported amazing growth in seasonal greetings by SMS. Danes and Norwegians broke their previous records with the Danes sending 16-million over the new year period, up 31% from a year ago. Norwegian networks carried 37,5-million text messages on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, says Sapa.

Things were less successful in Bulgaria, where mobile networks temporarily collapsed because of high traffic shortly after midnight on January 1.

While global figures have not yet been calculated, the number of SMS greetings sent over the new year is tipped to top 200-billion. Airwide Solutions, a mobile messaging player, predicted a massive increase in the emerging markets of eastern Europe, north Africa and Asia.

Airwide expected the UK to top 200-million New Year messages, and predicted that Poland and China would match that. The US, where SMS is less successful because local phone calls are free, is expected to report 125-million New Year messages. However, Filipinos, who send 400-million SMS messages on a normal day, should be the leaders.

South Africa: Billions of Beeps Usher in New Year via UNDP ICT for Development Observatory

Economist round up

Some recent articles about the mobile phone sector in the developing world. The India article talks about how mobiles are mainstreaming poor people into the economy. For now, the Indian mobile sector is focusing on cheap basic services rather than the latest and greatest in sexy 3G services. The Africa article talks about how regional providers are jockeying to be tops in their markets.

Talk is cheap, India leads the world in mobile-phone subscriber growth, Dec 7th 2006, From The Economist print edition

WITH 6.6m new subscribers a month, India is in the grip of an unprecedented mobile-phone boom. Figures released in September showed that India had overtaken China in new subscribers per month for the first time. India still lags behind China in total subscribers, with a mere 136m (up from 75m a year ago), compared with China's 449m. But India's government is confident that this gap can be quickly closed, and that it will meet its target of 500m phone subscribers by 2010.

The boom has become the source of much national pride. It is arguably a more widely celebrated example of the “New India” than the high-tech offshoring industry centred on Bangalore, because poorer Indians are participating in it too. Industry bosses are quick to point out that the spread of mobile phones is bringing labourers, farmers and fishermen into the economic mainstream. 'An unemployed person with a phone suddenly feels part of the nation,' says one top executive.

Out of Africa, A new kind of telecoms operator is evolving in Africa and the Middle East, Dec 7th 2006, From The Economist print edition

THAT mobile phones are transforming economic and social life in Africa is now widely understood. Less well known are the companies that are leading the charge. Following a flurry of deals over the past 18 months, five African and Middle Eastern operators are now vying for supremacy. These regional powerhouses have worked out how to earn princely sums in the world's poorest places. So far they have mostly been too busy signing up new subscribers to compete vigorously with each other. But that is now starting to change, and the industry is preparing for a round of consolidation as the operators start to attack each other's markets.

The five big operators are MTN of South Africa, MTC of Kuwait, Egypt's Orascom, Etisalat of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Vodacom, an Anglo-South African firm. John Tiefel, a partner at McKinsey, predicts that consolidation will result in three or four large operators spanning Africa and the Middle East, with a sprinkling of national firms. “All the operators have a very similar vision: to become meaningful players in all these markets,” says Phuthuma Nhleko, the boss of MTN Group in South Africa, which has operations in 21 countries across the region.

Links via Irini