The mobile phone operators in the country cashed the boom and enthusiasm of voters during elections 2013 campaign and generated revenues as SMS traffic got boost upto one billion per day. The election 2013 happened on May 11, can be termed quite a unique as all the political parties tried to make full use of all the media sources available to them especially the SMS tool to influence the voters.
Thousands of candidates in the country made full use of the modern communication facilities and continuously tried to convince voters in their constituencies.
One of the major medium used to boost the election campaigns was SMS as according to rough figures one billion short messages (SMS) were exchanged on daily basis in the country when the election was drawing nearer and nearer. An official of a mobile company at media office on Sunday told APP that a quick rise in the usage of SMS volume was observed. Not only the political parties used the SMSs, but their supporters also exchanged a lot of SMS which caused this boost in the volume. The subscribers in Pakistan usually exchange more than Rs one billion worth of SMS monthly which means that Rs 300,000 SMS per day are used. But the reason why the revenue has increased for cellular companies is that users usually activate SMS packages.
This rise of revenue is not only good for mobile companies but the medium used for campaigning is also very effective. Mobile users in Pakistan are 120 million in the whole country and this way election campaigns got more powerful and more people were touched by using SMS.
Mobile phone companies also used Election 2013 as an opportunity and generated different offers for their users. Their users are able to get all the information they need on Election by sending their mobile operators a SMS and they can receive their required information from the cellular company. It merits mentioned that Pakistan is one of the countries where per user SMS ratio is quite high. A general user generates 176 SMS per month in Pakistan. In China this number is 99 SMS per month, for India this figure is 53 per month, in USA this figure is 617 and in Brazil this figure is 22 SMS per month.