Virgin Mobile Moves SMS Messaging Database to MySQL Platform

Press Release - January 11, 2008

British MVNO, Virgin Mobile, has moved its back-end SMS database onto an open-source MySQL-based platform.

The open-source database system is now being used to process thousands of queries each second (each individual text message can generate over a hundred queries), and contains more than 500 GB of data, according to the carrier.

All applications have been developed internally at Virgin Mobile, based on a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) platform, and are highly scalable, particularly during peak usage times.

“The phenomenal growth in the number of subscribers to mobile phone services has led telecom operators and equipment manufacturers to develop new modern infrastructures to meet their customers’ needs,” commented MySQL’s senior director of worldwide telecom sales, Joe Morrissey. “MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition and MySQL Enterprise are now at the heart of the solutions implemented by the leading industry players. We are delighted about this additional endorsement by Virgin Mobile.”