Rajesh, a young businessman, sent Happy New Year text messages to all his friends barely a few minutes before the clock struck midnight on December 31.

His friends Deven, Ipshita and some others received the message on Tuesday night, around 24 hours after Rajesh had pressed the Send button.

“Some of my friends received the message that night itself, but some didn’t. It was really strange to learn that text messages were delivered after so many hours,” said Rajesh.

The delay in delivery of text messages baffled not only Rajesh and his friends, it also became a talking point in Calcutta on the first two days of 2008, as the volume of text messages doubled or trebled in the networks.

“Clogging of networks and ‘message sending failed’ are common on New Year’s Eve or other festivals. So, I was pleasantly surprised to find that messages could be sent and received on December 31. But later, I learnt that some messages moved at snail’s pace,” rued Rajesh.

The 24-hour delay in delivery of messages on the first two days of the year created confusion among cellphone users, causing professional and personal problems.

The cellular service providers — Vodafone Essar, Airtel and BSNL — refused to admit there was a problem in their networks.

But sources in the cellular industry explained the possible reasons for the delay in delivery of text messages, which are routed through the service provider.

“Different service providers have different retention time for these messages, which are stored in the SMS server of the home network. But due to clogging of the network on busy days, there is a time lag in the delivery,” explained a telecom industry insider.

As clogging of the network is one of the main reasons behind delivery failures, some companies tried to address the problem by tweaking the average retention time of text messages in the home network.

“With the rise in retention time, more attempts could be made in delivering the message and so they reached hours after they were sent,” said the expert, adding that upgrade in network is the only solution to this problem.

Service providers in Calcutta said they have been spending heavily on augmenting network capacity. The latest figures from the Cellular Operators Association of India reveal that Calcutta has around 40 lakh cellphone subscribers.

But ask users about their experience on days like New Year’s Eve or Vijaya Dashami, or in a crowded Eden Gardens, and the dissatisfaction is clear.

A Telecom Regulatory Authority of India survey, conducted among cellphone users in the city last year, had highlighted the dissatisfaction.

While overall customer satisfaction level was around 82 to 84 per cent in Calcutta, it was found to be much higher — around 90 to 95 per cent — in Chennai and Mumbai.

“The situation has improved since then and the satisfaction levels have moved a few notches higher. But we have a lot of catching up to do,” said an industry insider.