UK texts hit 5,000 per second

Last Modified: 06 Feb 2008
Source: ITN

Mobile phone users in the UK are sending nearly 5,000 text messages every second.

A report by the Mobile Data Association (MDA) suggests more than six billion texts were sent during December, a record high for a single month.

Mobile phone networks struggled to cope with the overload as 290 million texts were sent on New Year's Eve alone. The figure shows an increase of 30 per cent on the same night in 2006.

More than seven million texts were sent in the fortnight after the smoking ban came into force in July last year.

As technology becomes more sophisticated, more forms of mobile communication are becoming more popular. More than 50 million picture messages were sent in December, up 55 per cent on the previous year.

And nearly a quarter of UK mobile users accessed the internet via their handsets in December.

Music downloads to mobile phones were up 15 per cent since May.

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