Over 1 billion New Year SMS sent in France

New Year SMS traffic continues to grow in France, despite competition from social networks, Les Echos reports. The country's three mobile carriers said that some 500 million SMS were sent on 31 January 2011 and the night of 1 January 2012 and over 1 billion are thought to have transited over their networks including all of New Year's day. Bouygues Telecom claimed that its customers sent 200 million SMS, 30 percent more than last year, SFR up 20-25 percent to 183 million and Orange France 159 million. On the night of 31 December – 1 January last year, French mobile phone users sent 400 million SMS. The exceptional peaks in messaging over the new year do not yield higher revenues, as most customers are on unlimited or abundant SMS packages, but represent a technical challenge. There were problems in France last year, with delays and double sends of messages, which led to litigation between Orange and Bouygues, in which the later was the vindicated. La Tribune later reproted that 1.3 billion SMS were exchanged during the new year holiday in France.