OTTAWA – During the first three months of 2009, Canadians sent about 88 million text messages per day, or about 7.8 billion in total. That works out to a thumb-numbing 61,000 a minute or, over 1,000 a second.
Text messaging volumes have more than doubled each year since inter-carrier text messaging was introduced in Canada in the spring of 2002. Total messages sent in 2008 numbered more than 20.7 billion and Q1 ’09’s pace ran well ahead of the same quarter of last year when we sent a paltry 4.1 billion SMS messages.
All figures are according to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association and its polling of members (which include almost all wireless companies in Canada). The numbers are just person-to-person text messages and do not include any other texting activities such as short codes.
In total, 11 million unique users were responsible for sending the nearly 2.7 billion messages just in March 2009 alone, reports the CWTA. This represents an average of 246 messages in March per unique user, up from 213 messages per unique user in December 2008.
With the total Canadian wireless subscriber roll standing at about 21.7 million at the end of March, it shows that about 51% of the total wireless subscriber base was sending person-to-person text messages that month.
