Vodafone, Ireland’s most popular network, experienced record traffic levels as seasonal messages were passed to family and friends during the Christmas period. Voice calls reached a high of 21 million on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve. Text messages were the preferred channel for sending seasonal greetings on Christmas day and New year's eve with an all-time high of 27 million sent by Vodafone customers alone.

The Pogues' festive classic, "Fairytale of New York" continued to top the charts as the most popular download during the holidays, while Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas" came in a close second. Of the 600,000 full tracks available on the Vodafone catalogue, Rihanna's rhythmic "Umbrella" was the most popular download of 2007.

"Who Wants to be a Millionaire 3" was the Christmas gamers' favourite. Of the 450 games available on Vodafone live!, 2007's biggest selling game was the action genre hit "Brick Breaker Revolution".

Sky Sports News, followed by At the Races and Sky News were the most viewed channels on Mobile TV for 2007. Sky Sports 1, 2 and 3 on Mobile TV launched in December 2007 and are expected to be a hit in 2008 as Vodafone customers can now watch live Barclay's Premier League soccer matches on their mobiles as well as other live sports action.

This Christmas, Vodafone offered its most extensive and exclusive range of handsets ever. The biggest-selling phone for him this Christmas was the Sony Ericsson K800i, the Nokia 6300 was the favourite for her and the most popular music device was the Nokia 5200.

For additional information please contact:

Darina Sexton, Vodafone Ireland
Ph: 00 353 87 7753000
or
Alison Kelly, Drury Communications
Ph: 00 535 86 1955722