The Tribune

The Bahamas Telecommunications Company’s (BTC) yesterday said its upgraded network handled over 3.3 million texts during the wekend, during what it called “a 100% successful test drive” of its new mobile platform.

“We recorded 3.32 million texts from minute Friday to midnight Sunday,” said Marlon Johnson, BTC’s vice-president of brand and communications.

“That was an increase of 1.07 million texts over the weekend, an average of one million more than normal. This could never have happened without the upgrades to our network.”

Mr Johnson said the penny texting offer served a dual purpose, engaging the public as part of the Olympics contribution and testing the new texting platform.

“We wanted to make texting more affordable than ever to encourage everyone to stay engaged and in touch during the first weekend of the Olympics,” Mr Johnson said.

“That was for the public. For BTC, it served another purpose- to stress our new SMS testing platform. We had a million more texts than normal, a 48 per cent increase, and the system was flawless.

“In the past, if we had ever tried to handle such a massive load, customers could have experienced issues with delayed or even lost texts, but with the upgrade in the SMS platform, we proved that we can handle texting traffic flow whatever the demand.”

The highest traffic time both nights of the promotion was between 9 and 11 pm. BTC said it will offer the penny-a-text rate again next weekend.

“The penny text promotion is part of our commitment to make the Bahamas’ presence at the Olympics even more significant for the athletes, team members and all of us at home watching and cheering on Team Bahamas,” said Mr Johnson

Penny texts were part of BTC’s overall contribution to the 2012 Summer Olympics underway in London.

On July 16, the company kicked off its donations with a $100,000 contribution to the Bahamas Olympics Committee, announcing a four-year partnership to sustain training efforts through the 2016 Brazil Olympics.