2 Billion SMS messages a day in the Philippines

If you’ve listen to the news lately about the current move of the Senate to “solicit” 10% of the Telcos’ earnings from text messages, you’d probably notice that the current estimate for SMS messages in the Philippines is about 2 billion SMS messages daily (that’s daily!).

That’s about 720 billion text messages annually — closing in on the 1 trillion mark. We’d probably end up in the Guiness with no sweat. The US has about 95 million for the first half of 2008 (which is already a record for them) compared to the 300 billion estimate for the first half of 2008 for the Philippines.

The Philippines has about 40 million mobile phone users. The 2 billion text messages translates to about 50 SMS messages per day per person!

I wonder if the approval of the 10% solicitation will put a dent on the usage of text messaging. What happens if all start using Smart Uzzap and Globe Unlichat? Would that be counted as text messages?

At the amount of SMS traffic that we have, the Philippines could probably start its very own Instant Messaging network. The technology and software are readily available. Wonder why the Telcos aren’t doing it.