According to figures provided by the two operators, from 1900 hours on December 31, 2006 to 2400 hours on January 1, 2007, T-mobile users sent 16.5 million SMS messages and VIPnet users around 16 million.
The year before, T-mobile users sent 12 million messages and VIPnet users around 11 million.
Overall, SMS traffic through the two mobile phone networks was around 43 million, including both sent and received messages.
Around 22 million messages went through the T-mobile network and around 21 million through that of VIPnet. Compared to 2005, SMS traffic in the reported period increased about eight million, or 22.8 per cent.
On Christmas 2006, SMS traffic was 48.5 million, of which 24.5 million messages went through the T-mobile network and 24 million through the VIPnet network. On Christmas Eve, a total of 35.5 million Christmas messages were sent.
It follows that within a space of only four days or 56 hours, Croatian citizens sent a total of 68 million text messages via the two mobile phone networks.
T-mobile has over two million users and VIPnet over 1.8 million.
No information on SMS traffic was available from the country's third mobile phone operator, Tele 2.
Meanwhile, the Croatian Postal Service (HP) has reported that Croats sent around eight million season's greetings cards from December 11 to 23, which was about 10 per cent more than in the same period of 2005.