PHILIPPINES AS THE TEXT CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

UNEDITED SAMPLE NEWS ARTICLE
By Zatia Denise Danao Gammad
IV-Madame Marie Curie


For a country not considered as one of the top technological innovators in the world, bearing the title, “Text Capital of the World” should come as a surprise.

With 120 to 150 million messages crossing mobile phone networks daily, the Philippines was dubbed with this title in 2004. (http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/) Nowadays, according to telecommunications companies, the average mobile phone user in the Philippines sends 7 text messages a day and reaching 15 text messages since unlimited text promos became popular.

500 to 600 million text messages a day are sent by the 33 million subscribers of Smart and Talk N' Text collectively as stated by the Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) company. That means the average subscriber of PLDT sends about 15 to 18 text messages a day.

The company's incoming and outgoing traffic combined is estimated at around one billion text messages per day, maintaining the distinction which other countries such as China, being the world’s largest mobile subscriber market, claim to have.

Sun Cellular subscribers are estimated to send 10 to 15 text messages per day. With 6.5 million subscribers, the network was managing about 100 million outgoing text messages every day as of end-June.

Globe Telecom Inc. said its network handled 500 million to 700 million incoming and outgoing messages per day. As of end-June, its subscriber base was 22.7 million.

National Telecommunications Commission Common Carrier Division chief Edgardo Cabarrios said, "In terms of total volume, other countries may have higher numbers because of sheer population size. But per capita, the Philippines still has among the highest volume of text activity, if not the highest."

Furthermore, because of Sun Cellular’s recent 24/7 promo, which Sun subscribers can call and text other Sun subscribers for free, the short message service or SMS volume is expected to dramatically increase as more and more people sign up for Sun accounts. In fact, the trend now is to have a Sun SIM for only Php 200 as a second mobile account and a cheap cellular phone such as Nokia 2100.


REFERENCES:

Olchondra, R. (2008, August 31). Wer na u? Yo, RP texters send 600M messages a day! Philippine Daily Inquirer, p. A15.

PHILIPPINES: Cyber protest over SMS tax. (2004, August 10). Retrieved August 31, 2008 from http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/

Text capital of the world nga ba? (2004, November 29). Retrieved August 31, 2008 from http://vaes9.codedgraphic.com/