Thumbs in overdrive for New Year wishes
Greeks exchanged just under 36 million New Year text messages on their cellphones at the dawn of 2004, an all-time record in a country where most people own at least one mobile phone. According to data provided by mobile phone operating companies, the total number of text messages on January 1 reached 35.9 million, a substantial part of which was sent in the early hours of New Year’s Day. Vodafone subscribers sent 13.6 million messages, over twice as many as are sent on a normal day and 10 percent more than on January 1, 2003. Some 3.1 million messages were sent before 2 a.m. CosmOTE clients followed at 13.2 million text messages. Telestet clocked 8 million messages, and Q-Telecom another 1.1 million. There are over 10.8 million mobile phone connections in Greece, although about one in four connections is inactive.
