I was interested by what Bena Roberts posted over at GoMoNews about the extra pressure on mobile networks over the Xmas and New Year period from festive calls and texts.

Like O2UK, the Japanese operators have been sending out warnings that their networks may become temporarily unavailable under a deluge of ‘Happy New Year’ texts and calls. A couple of interesting things stick out from the press releases.

Firstly, DoCoMo announced that it has managed to migrate enough of its subscribers over to 3G that it didn’t anticipate any need to put restrictions on its 2G service over the new year period.

Secondly, it seems that mobile festive greetings are in a declining trend in Japan. DoCoMo reported that on New Year’s Eve 2004 there was 11 times the normal level of voice and email traffic. In 2005 it was 4.4 times 6 times respectively. For this New Year DoCoMo predicted only 3 times the calls and 4 times the emails.

Despite the warnings, a Nepro survey showed that 40% of respondents still intended to send a New Year’s greeting, with only 18% saying that they would choose to avoid the peak 12-1 hour to send then.

It will be interesting to see how the New Year mobile traffic actually turned out when the Japanese news/press releases start up again after the New Year break.

# posted by Jan Kuczynski @ 1:00 pm