UK: Texting is top way for UK to stay in touch

Texting is the most popular way for British people to stay in contact, with the average consumer sending 50 SMS messages a week, according to a study by UK communications regulator Ofcom.

The findings come as the text message celebrates its 20th birthday on Monday.

The first ever SMS was sent on December 3 1992, when Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old British engineer used his computer to send the message "Merry Christmas" to an Orbitel 901 mobile phone.

Now 90 per cent of 16-24 year olds text daily to communicate with friends and family, according to the Ofcom study.

The Communications Market Report 2012 said talking on the phone was also less popular than texting among the age group, with only 67 per cent saying they make daily phone calls.

In 2011, more than 150 billion text messages were sent in the UK, which was almost triple the amount sent five years previously in 2006.

The report also found that texting was most prolific among 12-15 year olds, who send an average of 193 texts every week, almost four times the UK average. This has more than doubled from 12 months ago, when just 91 were sent each week by the same age group.

Girls aged 12 to 15 are texting significantly more than boys, sending an average of 221 messages a week - 35 per cent more than boys of the same age, who send 164 a week. The average child aged 8 to 11 sends 41 texts each week, almost double the number sent in 2011.

The first half of 2012 saw two quarterly declines in the volume of SMS messages sent in the UK (Q1 2012: 39.1 billion; Q2 2012: 38.5 billion), falling slightly from their peak of 39.7 billion in Q4 in 2011.

This decline could be attributed to people using alternative forms of text-based communications, such as instant messaging and social networking sites.

The recent increase in ownership of internet-connected devices, such as tablets and smartphones, could also be behind this trend. Four in 10 (39 per cent) adults now own a smartphone, making it easier to gain access to web-based communications.

James Thickett, Ofcom's director of research, said: "When texting was first conceived many saw it as nothing more than a niche service.

"But texts have now surpassed traditional phone calls and meeting face to face as the most frequent way of keeping in touch for UK adults, revolutionising the way we socialise, work and network.

"For the first time in the history of mobile phones, SMS volumes are showing signs of decline.

"However, the availability of a wider range of communications tools, like instant messaging and social networking sites, means that people might be sending fewer SMS messages, but they are 'texting' more than ever before."

Source: By AAP on 3rd December 2012.

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Happy 20th Birthday to SMS Text Message!

Woohoo ~ ~ Let's sing a birthday song now !!

Happy Birthday to You

Happy Birthday to You

Happy Birthday to SMS

Happy Birthday to You

The first text message was sent 20 years ago!

Ever wonder when was the 1st SMS was sent? Read below...

The very first text message was sent 20 years ago, on Dec. 3, 1992. The momentous missive? “Merry Christmas,” wrote Neil Papworth, then a 22-year-old engineer, to Richard Jarvis, an executive at British telecom Vodafone. Jarvis was attending his company’s holiday party in Newbury, England, and received the text on an Orbitel 901 (see picture on left).

To be precise, this marks the 20th birthday of SMS, which stands for Short Messaging Service. In most cases, an SMS is sent from one phone to another on a narrow slice of cellular bandwidth called the control channel, an ever-present connection that’s also used to notify phones of incoming calls and signal strength. That’s one reason why SMS has proven to be a durable form of communication during disasters, when traffic channels, which are used for phone calls and larger data transfers, get overloaded.
The control channel’s diminutive size is what accounts for the strict, 160-character cap on text message length. (In turn, that’s why Twitter, which was originally based on SMS, limits tweets to 140 characters, in order to fit the message plus the sender in a single text message.) It’s also why some people argue that wireless carriers gouge their customers by charging several cents per text when the marginal cost to the company is zero: the control channel is used whether or not it’s transmitting an SMS.

In fact, on its 20th birthday, the text message finds itself threatened by a host of free alternatives, from Facebook messaging to Apple’s iMessage. SMS usage is waning in much of the world, now even including the United States, which was slower to the adopt the technology. That decline is likely to accelerate as more people purchase smartphones that are laden with other messaging options, meaning the future of SMS lies in feature-phone markets like India and Africa.

Still, text messaging remains the world’s most widely used form of digital communication, with some six billion to eight billion texts sent per year, according to various estimates. The technology has endured, in part, thanks to its compatibility across different types of phones and networks: SMS didn’t really take off until the late 1990s, when companies and governments began lifting regulations that only permitted sending texts between customers on the same network.

Though other forms of communication had more memorable inaugural messages—”What hath God wrought” was the first telegram—it’s fitting that the first SMS was “Merry Christmas.” Nowadays, the busiest day for text messaging is, in fact, Christmas Eve, when people across the world reach out to each other with short and sweet attempts to connect.

Source: By Zachary M. Seward on 3rd Dec 2012