“Our SMSC coped very well during this period and the contingency plans we had in place did not have to be implemented,” said Bernice Samuels, GM: MTN brand and corporate affairs, MTN South Africa.
On Christmas day MTN received 867 SMS per second from MTN handsets and handled a total of 65,259,945 SMS on that one day. On January 1, 2008, 906 SMS per second were received from MTN handsets. MTN achieved an excellent success rate of up to 98% on the SMS originators. A total of 223 billion SMS were sent on the following peak days: 24; 25 and 31 December 2007 and 1 January 2008.
The number of people sending MMSs during December increased by 18% from November 2007. The growth from last year on MMS was 35%, showing the increasing entrenchment of MMS in customer's lives. One of the greeting cards that MTN had available for Christmas was forwarded more than 10 000 times in one day. MTN had greeting cards available in four languages on *123# for customers to personalize and forward to their friends, instead of sending a text only message.
“In 2007 we added additional GPRS core equipment in Cape Town to supplement the existing equipment in Gauteng. Many of the servers have been significantly upgraded, international capacity was increased, and an additional 45Mbps international link from Cape Town was made available. The 3G/HSDPA network is in the best condition ever and has measured performance to rival the best in the world,” said Samuels.
