Australians sent almost one billion festive texts
Mobile messaging systems provider Acision has said its figures of global SMS traffic over the 2007/2008 New Year period, showed an increase by 30 percent compared to the same period last year, and doubled compared to regular traffic levels.
Around the world, phone users sent around 43 billion text messages to wish their loved ones a happy New Year in the midst of their celebrations – more than 23 billion of which were successfully processed through Acision's systems worldwide.
According to Acision's vice president of Australia and New Zealand, Bill Dekker, Australians are well known as party people and have sent a flurry of celebratory SMSs over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years' Eve and New Years day.
“With a national population of around 21 million, a collective sum of 97.8 million SMSs were sent across Australia over those four days. The average daily SMS traffic is around 1.65 million or around 6.6 million messages across an average four days,†he said.
While Australians send their fair share of messages, as the world's largest consumers of text messages, the Philippines toped the ranking with 1.44 billion messages.
The Philippines was closely followed by Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and Singapore who rounded out the top five Asia Pacific SMS markets over the festive season. With Thailand and Australia ranking sixth and seventh respectively.
“The surge in SMS traffic during this festive season is a clear indication that SMS continues to be a favourite method of communication, and will remain so as we move into 2008. It's very nature of being easy to use, quick and the most convenient way to reach out to multiple recipients,†Dekker said
