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Mobile Carriers on Edge Before New Years Eve

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  • Published Dec 30, 2007 5:40 pm KST
  • Updated Dec 30, 2007 5:40 pm KST

By Cho Jin-seo

Staff Reporter

When the big bell of Boshingak tolls to signal the start of a new year, it will be a hectic moment for telecom firms.

Phone companies expect that the daily use of short messaging service (SMS) on mobile phones will reach 600 million on Monday, easily surpassing 500 million messages sent a year ago. To ensure that the traffic surge does not freeze the whole phone network in places such as Jongno, Shinchon and Gangnam, where the New Year's Eve crowds like to gather, the firms have expanded network capacities and arranged extra night shift workers.

From around Christmas, SK Telecom and KT have been operating 24-hour monitoring systems for the year-end season. SK Telecom laid more cables that link relay stations in hot spots to its network centers. KT, which loans optical cable networks to telecom firms, set up a hotline for its customer companies and has some 430 engineers ready to react to emergency calls.

``We have special plans for the holiday traffic, as people will send greetings to their friends or business partners. The Internet traffic for financial transactions will also rise,'' a KT public relations official said. ``We expect the traffic will surge on Dec. 31 and on Jan. 1, as it did on Dec. 24,'' an SK Telecom official said.

It is not only South Korea that expects an increase in SMS traffic on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. In Thailand, it is projected to rise to 100 million messages from about 62 million last year, according to the Bangkok Post due to the increasing use of SMS. The United States and the Untied Kingdom will have 730 million and 280 million New Year messages to be sent, according to Airwide Solution, a networking firm. Worldwide, there will be 15 percent rise in the number of New Year messages, the firm estimates.

Network chaos happened last New Year's Eve. Last year, users of SK Telecom and other mobile phone services received delayed messages while they were in bed or in the early hours of the morning. The companies explained that they deliberately delayed transmissions as they were worried about overheating the network servers in the Jongno area, where the Boshingak bell ceremony is held every year.

This year, the situation is a bit more complex. The three telecom firms ― SK Telecom, KTF and LG Telecom ― are to lower the SMS fee to 20 won from 30 won as of Jan. 1. The change will discourage the users from sending messages before the midnight, which means traffic will be concentrated after then.

indizio@koreatimes.co.kr