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Flood of greetings jam cell phone networks

By Sandeep Joshi

NEW DELHI JAN. 1. A flood of New Year greetings jammed the networks of cellular phone operators here today with around one crore SMSs being sent around midnight on Tuesday.

AirTel and Hutch subscribers faced the most problems as both networks failed to cope with the pressure of SMSs. ``The network can handle around 10,000 SMSs per minute, but the figure this time round was in lakhs so the messages piled up jamming the network,'' said an executive working with a cellular company.

There are nearly 17 lakh mobile phone subscribers in the capital, with Airtel having around eight lakhs of them and Hutch nearly six lakhs. ``On an average, around six lakh SMSs are sent daily, but on special occasions like New Year's Day and Diwali the figure rises fivefold. But this time we had a record number of SMSs which kept on pilling for hours.''

According to a senior Hutch official, Naresh Gupta, ``By Wednesday afternoon we had delivered around 40 lakh messages which is a record. SMSs kept on piling and it took at least two hours after midnight to clear the queue.''

People had a tough time getting connected, particularly around midnight. ``New Year celebration is a time-specific event and people want to wish at a particular moment and hence the problem,'' said Mr. Gupta. ``Though we had made preparations knowing that there would be tremendous pressure on our network, such was the public enthusiasm that our network failed to meet their aspirations. But we cleared all the traffic in a very short period,'' said an AirTel executive.

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