China: Beijingers send 400 mln text messages on Lunar New Year's eve

Xinhua ^ | 02/19/07

[TigerLikesRooster]

Beijingers send 400 mln text messages on Lunar New Year's eve

www.chinaview.cn 2007-02-19 01:15:46

BEIJING, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- Beijingers sent more than 400 million text messages of greetings on the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, the most important festival in China.

Figures released Sunday by Beijing Mobile and Beijing Unicom, two major telecommunications operators in the Chinese capital, showed that about 5,800 text messages were sent per second Saturday in Beijing.

The Chinese Lunar New Year starts on the first day of the first lunar month, which falls on Sunday this year. Reuniting with family members, ushering in luck for the year and sending New Year greetings are usually the key themes.

Nationwide, China Mobile and China Unicom estimated on Sunday that Chinese people would send around 14 billion festival text messages during the seven-day Lunar New Year holiday.

Official statistics indicated that Chinese people sent 429.6 billion text messages through mobile phones last year, a daily average of up to 1.2 billion.

There were more than 460 million mobile phones subscribers in China at the end of 2006.

[TigerLikesRooster]

At Midnight on Dec. 31, 2005, I sent a text message(one-liner) to somebody sitting next to me at a bar. Later I learned that it arrived after 5 am on Jan. 1, 2005. Gazillion messages were traveling around in mobile phone networks, overloading the system.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Ping!

[LadyDoc]

Sounds about right.
In the US, I never text messaged. But here in the Philippines, even our cook and driver have cellphones. You buy a "load" for 100 pesos (two dollars) and then you can text. Texting takes a few seconds, so it is cheap. And because you don't have to pay for a telephone line, you don't need to pay a bill every month. YOu pay as you go.