Vodafone registers SMS peaks during New Year’s Eve WhatsApp failure

Vodafone has registered some significant spikes in SMS traffic in the hours leading up to the turn of the year. Customers switched to SMS en masse during the WhatsApp outage. Traffic via the 4G network increased by 114 percent compared to last year.

Not only during the turn of the year, around noon, but also in the hours before that, Vodafone registered peaks in SMS traffic, up to 33 percent higher than average. The times of this, around 5:30 PM, 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM, correspond to those when WhatsApp was experiencing disruptions. Due to the outage, users were unable to connect and send messages, after which they switched en masse to alternatives, such as SMS. Around midnight WhatsApp had no disruption and the service was able to handle the crowds.

Despite the unexpected peaks in SMS traffic, the number of SMS messages sent decreased compared to last year, by 30 percent. Every year, the number of text messages sent decreases around the turn of the year, as people increasingly use chat services such as WhatsApp. Between 6:00 PM and 4:00 AM, Vodafone’s 4G network handled more than 30 terabytes of internet traffic, an increase of 114 percent from last year. The number of mobile calls fell by 3.6 percent at the provider to 7 million.