UK: 11 Million Texts per Hour

Texting has become a very important method of communicating with our friends and loved ones. It is cheap, fast and in some instances, more reliable that voice calls (especially when you are spelling out specific instructions or information). According to a recently published report from the Mobile Data Association, the total number of text messages sent each hour within the UK reaches up to a total of 11 million.

The information was compiled from data submitted to the MDA by various UK based mobile phone operators and reflects the message sending rate of the UK for 2009. At 11 million per hour, that gives out a total of over 200 million messages sent each day.

By that number alone it is easy to see how much we rely on mobile phone technology for our everyday tasks. Of course, the prevalence of services that allows users to send Tweets and Facebook updates through SMS also played a large part in the increasing number of messages being sent.

So is this good news?

There is nothing right or wrong with the increasing number of messages being sent during a given time; and judging from the trends in the mobile industry, we can predict that this upward growth curve will continue to increase as more and more ways to utilize text messaging becomes available.

Even the number of multimedia messages (MMS) being sent is increasing. This is further encouraged by newer mobile phones that make shooting images and sending files a whole lot easier.

Should you cut down on the messages you send each day? There is no reason not to. So far, it has yet to be proven if mobile phone signals are actually harmful. While compulsive text messaging may be a sign of bigger problems, you should not stop yourself from forwarding that funny message to your friends.

For more hard numbers from the MDA, head straight to Softpedia.