South Africa’s semi-privatised telephone utility Telkom is facilitating a quest for a world record for the most birthday wishes ever received by an individual on one day.
They are opening the lines to wish former South African President Nelson Mandela a happy 85th birthday — which he celebrates on Friday July 18.
Telkom spokesperson Xolisa Vapi said in a statement that millions of people from all corners of the globe were expected to join the quest for the record.
“Telkom is facilitating a phone-in campaign to set a Guinness Book World Record, and a portion of the proceedings from all Madiba’s birthday wishes made on Telkom’s two special numbers allocated for the campaign will go to the Nelson Mandela Foundation.”
The phone-in numbers for the campaign are for domestic calls — 086 7111885 and international — +2712MANDELA.
Birthday wishes on the lines are set to start pouring in with the official launch of the phone-in on Wednesday.
“Friday is D-Day for the campaign as the attempt to outdo the only existing Guinness World Record of birthday wishes sent by post reaches its peak.”
The actual world record attempt starts from Friday morning (18 July 2003) at 00:01 till midnight, and the proceeds of the phone-in campaign will be handed over to the Nelson Mandela’s Foundation at a function on Saturday.
Driven by FoneWorx, one of Telkom’s premium rate service providers, in conjunction with the SABC and their international media partners, the initiative is expected to generate millions of calls.
All the calls will terminate on Telkom’s network. To manage the call traffic, Telkom has installed 100 primary rate ISDN lines, which can handle a total of 3 000 calls simultaneously. – I-Net Bridge