Short messaging service soars by 1.8 trn in 2010

The total globally Short Messaging Service (SMS) sent in 2010 increased by 1,800,000,000 trillion as at December 31 last year.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) gave this insight in its latest StatShot released last weekend and made available to ITRealms Online.

According to the StatShot, at current growth rates, there will be well over a thousand SMS messages sent by end of December 2011, for every person on the planet.

ITU also indicated that there were 2.8 trillion SMS messages sent in 2008; 4.3 trillion in 2009; and 6.1 trillion in 2010, which shows the growth of 1.8 trillion.

The report further indicated that the developing world is catching up as far as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) growth is concerned.

Some of the highlights to underscore this, StatShot noted were based on the fact that there were as many fixed broadband subscriptions in the developing world in 2010, as there were in the developed world in 2008, just two years earlier.

That is, 251 million vs 253 million in 2008 and 2010 respectively, just as China alone accounts for around half of all the developing world’s fixed broadband subscriptions.

Equally the report indicated that there were more mobile broadband subscriptions in the developing world in 2010 accounted for 309 million than there were in the whole world in 2007 was 307 million, just three years earlier.

In addition, StatShot informed that there were almost as many mobile cellular subscriptions in the developing world in 2010 at the tune of 3.8 billion, as there were in the whole world in 2008 with 4 billion, and half a billion more than there were in the developed world in 2007.

StatShot showed that by end of 2010, developing world Internet users accounted for 58 per cent of the global total, with 1.2 billion in the developing world, compared to 900 million in the developed world.

“But with most of the world’s population living in developing countries, only a fifth of people there are online, compared to almost three quarters in richer nations,” part of the report read.

ITU is the leading United Nations agency for information and communication technology for over 145 years, coordinating the shared global use of the radio spectrum, promoted international cooperation in assigning satellite orbits, worked to improve communication infrastructure in the developing world, and established the worldwide standards that foster seamless interconnection of a vast range of communications systems.

Remmy Nweke:
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