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China to send 17b SMSes this CNY
Sat, Feb 09, 2008 The Straits Times
BEIJING - CHINESE mobile phone operators seemed set to benefit from the country's tradition of exchanging greetings during Chinese New Year, with more than 17 billion text messages expected to be sent. This could well be a new record, according to the country's Ministry of Information Industry (MII). The estimate, if correct, would mean that there was a 12 per cent increase in the number of text messages since the last Spring Festival, when 15.2 billion messages were sent, Xinhua reported. MII said the dramatic rise was due to the rapid increase of cellphone users in the past year.

According to the ministry's data, Chinese cellphone users sent 592.1 billion text messages last year, with a daily volume of more than 1.6 billion.

These numbers could rise further, given that plans are in the offing to scrap the domestic roaming charges for mobile phones and launch caller-pay schemes.

According to government estimates, once these plans are implemented, the number of cellphone users could increase at a faster pace than fixed-line users.

It is estimated that there would be at least 60 million new users, taking the cellphone prevalence rate to 46.4 per cent by the end of this year, Xinhua reported.