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Published on January 3, 2008

Advanced Info Service (AIS) enjoyed better traffic than its forecast, which had assumed that people were not in the mood to send New Year greetings due to the stagnant economy.

The largest cellular operator said it handled 41 million short messages (SMS) and 750,000 multimedia messages (MMS) sent on its network on December 31 and January 1.

That was up a combined 25 per cent from the previous year but lower than the 30-per-cent growth of SMS alone on December 31, 2006 and January 1, 2007.

AIS had forecast the increase in SMS traffic this New Year at 20 per cent and the higher results were attributed to good preparation of its network capacity and the growth in its mobile-phone subscribers.

AIS has around 24 million subscribers.

Thailand had about 48 million mobile-phone users last year, up about a third from 36 million in 2006.

Second-largest cellular operator Total Access Communication (DTAC) carried 38 million SMS and 680,000 MMS, an improvement of 32 per cent and 36 per cent respectively from last New Year.

On December 31, 2006 and January 1, 2007, DTAC registered the sending of 29 million short messages versus 21 million over the same period in the previous year.

DTAC lists more than 16 million mobile-phone subscribers.

True Move recorded SMS traffic of 18.5 million during this New Year versus 12.8 million last year and 8.25 million the previous year. It has more than 12 million subscribers.

 Telecom Reporters

 The Nation