Text Message Information

Filipinos sent 1 billion text messages daily in 2007

By Rosemarie Francisco
Reuters
First Posted 21:06:00 03/04/2008

Filed Under: mobile phones

MANILA, Philippines -- Filipinos doubled the number of text messages they sent last year to an
average of one billion daily, industry data showed on Tuesday.

The Philippines is one of the prolific text messaging centers of the world with even the central
bank governor sending monetary policy statements via mobile phone

and an increasing number of consumers using their handsets for banking and bill payments.

For the estimated eight million plus Filipinos who work overseas, texting is the main method of
staying in touch with family back home. Text messages are also an important political tool and
were instrumental in the overthrow of president Joseph Estrada in 2001 by alerting people to
rallies.

Smart Communications, the country's biggest telecoms group, said on Tuesday messages on its
network hit a daily average of 700-750 million last year.

Rival Globe Telecom told Reuters about 300-400 million messages were sent daily on its
network last year.

Smart and Globe have over 50 million subscribers and the country's mobile

penetration rate is around 60 percent, compared with 35 percent in Indonesia, 75 percent in

Thailand and 84 percent in Malaysia.

Napoleon Nazareno, PLDT's chief executive, said up to 80 percent penetration is possible over
the next two years as a rising economy enables more people to buy mobiles.

In 2006, 500 million text messages were sent daily and 250 million in 2005, according to the
National Telecommunications Commission.

The popularity of text messaging is partly driven by cheap offers. Credit can be bought for as
little as P1 (2.5 US cents) and one mobile user can pass credits to another phone.

A SIM card can be bought for P50.

-http://technology.inquirer.net/infotech/infotech/view/20080304-122775/Filipinos-sent-1-billion-text-
messages-daily-in-2007

Abstract Table of Search Inside Related Reports

Contents this Report

Countries covered: Philippines

Then, the situation radically changed. Growth is usage exploded and now, nine years later,
about over 80% of Filipinos are subscribers. This growth was driven by the popularity of SMS,
known locally as texting. The Philippines was the first country to adopt the service to any great
extent, and remains the texting ‘capital’ of the world.

The reasons for the success of SMS texting are numerous, and include the fact that Filipinos are
both gregarious and good communicators. Texting provided an inexpensive means of keeping
in touch.

In general, other wireless data services are still in their infancy in the Philippines. Services such
as WAP, GPRS and MMS are being adopted only slowly. 3G is now starting to be deployed.

The Internet is still not well used except in the main urban areas such as Manila. Despite the
relatively early introduction of the Internet to the Philippines, the service has not been
anywhere near as successful as in many other countries. Registered subscribers still represent
only about 5% of the population.

E-commerce is also still at an early stage. Although there is much discussion and publicity
about the service (which may be preparing the ground for the future), very little business is
actually being conducted online at present.

Broadband services are now deployed in Metro Manila and other major conurbations, but the
service is still largely unavailable in most rural areas. The range of technologies being used
where broadband is available includes DSL, fixed wireless, coaxial cable and satellites.

The pay-TV industry has considerable potential. There are more than nine million TV
households in the country, but only about 1.2 million subscribe to pay-TV. An accurate
estimate of the number of pay-TV households is, however, difficult to come by because of
under-reporting by the operators. Government charges are levied on the number of viewers, so
it is in the operators’ interest to downplay their viewing figures.

The Philippines is one of the least developed telecom markets in the Asia-Pacific region. That
being so, it has greater investment potential than the more mature markets provided that the
economy continues to develop and further social unrest is avoided.
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-http://www.marketresearch.com/product/display.asp?productid=2305234&SID=94020970-480354677-
423298079&curr=USD

Philippines: Texting capital of the world

Saturday, August 05, 2006
filed under: technology

"You are qualified to win the ......"

The number of text messages sent a day is growing very rapidly anywhere around the world. By
mid-2004, SMS messages were being sent at a rate of 500 billion messages per annum. With its
wide coverage, text messaging has been the target of spammers and text spams could become a
bigger problem than e-mail-based spam.

I read it today in David Lazarus article, how the millions of text-message spams are circulating
already in the U.S. The majority target younger cell phone users who send the most text

messages.
"What's more, many cell phone subscribers face the double whammy of having to pay 10 cents
for every text message received, whether read or unread, solicited or unsolicited."
However, I see this problem as worldwide and surely not only to U.S. wireless users. If the U.S.
sees this as a problem for their nearly 10 billion text messages sent every month, how much more
for the Philippines, tagged as the texting capital of the world, which sends around 350 to 400
million SMS daily, more than all the SMS volumes of European countries, America, and China
combined.

At the end of 2005, the four main mobile-phone service providers in the country reported there
were 34.78 million cellphone subscribers in the Philippines, up from 32.94 million a year earlier.
It is expected that the trend will continue as providers continue to compete by providing low and
affordable service offerings (PHP 1.00 or USD 0.019 per text) and many promotional gimmicks.
One of the famous services is the unlimited texting which subscribers truly buy.

While in the U.S. communication officials are acknowledging the emerging serious problem and
are taking steps to make sure it doesn't become more widespread, in the Philippines, the National
Telecommunications Commission (NTC) may lift the moratorium on commercial text messages
being broadcast over cellular phone networks.

NTC reports that there is a revised moratorium circular on deceptive "text spam" that must be
complied by mobile phone companies and their content providers. However, this revised circular
simply regulates spamming (maybe blocking few messages). Not totally scrapping it off.
This blogger has been many times a victim of commercial messages. I cannot blame mobile
phone subscribers to send thousands of complaints to NTC about their service providers billing
them for receiving unsolicited text messages and annoying broadcasts.

Honestly, I am not seeing a rapid solution for text spams. Not in the coming months. With an
average of two sms spams a day, I am starting to feel the inconvenience of receiving the
messages.

With the millions of text messages sent a day, service providers will continue to look for ways to
tap this frontier for easy profit and revenue. Spams will continue coming to each and every
mobile phone!
I need to go now and complain!

Labels: Personal Essays

-http://salaswildthoughts.blogspot.com/2006/08/plague-for-philippines-texting-capital.html

July 5, 2000

Manila's Talk of the Town Is Text Messaging

By WAYNE ARNOLD

ANILA, Philippines -- Muslim insurgents battling

Philippine troops in the south have a new weapon.
When the shelling and gunfire let up, they send a
barrage of scathing insults to Manila's forces by cell
phone.

"There is a text war among the MILF and our forces,"

said Brig. Gen. Eliseo Rio Jr., referring to the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front, the larger of two rebel groups
fighting for an independent state. "Our soldiers are Aaron Favila for The New York Times
texting insults to the MILF. And the MILF are sending
the insults back." Two Manila students sent text messages
last month while taking a break, or maybe,
"Texting"? Yes, texting -- as in exchanging short typed given the volume of "texting," what they
messages over a cell phone. did between messages was their break.

All over the Philippines, a verb has been born, and

Filipinos use it whether they are speaking English or
Tagalog.

Sending e-mail on mobile phones, has also taken off in richer parts of the world: Europe,
especially in Scandinavia, and in Japan and other East Asian countries, particularly among teen-
agers. But in the Philippines, where incomes are far lower, it is even more popular. And it has
spawned an entire subculture, complete with its own vocabulary, etiquette and tactical uses. It
has become particularly popular here, in large part because text messaging is cheap while
traditional telephone service is spotty and Internet access by computer is expensive.
"It's evolved into something similar to chatting on the Internet," said Majidi John Bola, a 32-
year-old company manager, as he sat poking away at his mobile phone at a Starbucks in Manila's
business district.

The difference is that while chat-room denizens sit in contemplative isolation, glued to computer
screens, in the Philippines the "texters" are right out in the throng. Malls are infested with
shoppers who appear to be navigating by cellular compass. Groups of diners sit ignoring one
another, staring down at their phones as if fumbling with rosaries. Commuters, jaywalkers, even
mourners -- everyone in the Philippines seems to be texting over the
phone. Most use English, since messages usually can be typed more
quickly than in Tagalog. Related Article
Virus Brings Publicity to
Faye Siytangco, a 23-year-old airline sales representative, was not Computer Subculture in
surprised when at the wake for a friend's father she saw people bowing Philippines
their heads and gazing toward folded hands. But when their hands (May 15, 2000)
started beeping and their thumbs began to move, she realized to her
astonishment that they were not, in fact, praying.

"People were actually sitting there and texting," Siytangco said.

"Filipinos don't see it as rude anymore."

The popularity of the practice puts the Philippines at the forefront of wireless Internet usage, well
ahead of much richer countries. Already, people can use their phones to send text messages to
computers, and vice versa. Here as elsewhere, the newest mobile phones have access to an
abridged World Wide Web. And not far away is new technology that is supposed to make
browsing on a hand phone as easy and as fast as it is on a personal computer.

All this gives high-technology executives like Roy Buzon, an American venture capitalist who is
investing in local start-ups, confidence that wireless technologies will help the Philippines close
the Internet usage gap with the United States and Europe.

Why is the new text message system so popular here? Many say it is the high-technology
Filipino equivalent of gesticulating -- body language with an antenna. "Filipinos are very
gregarious -- we like to talk a lot," said Rodolfo Salalima, a senior vice president at Globe
Telecom, the local cellular operator benefiting most from the trend.

They also love a good bargain. The craze for sending text messages by phone started last year,
when Globe introduced prepaid cards that enabled students -- and soldiers -- too poor for a long-
term subscription to start using cellular phones, which can be bought cheaply. Since talking on
mobile phones costs 8 pesos a minute, about 20 cents, and sending text messages from them was
free, people quickly figured out how to express themselves on a phone's alphanumeric keypad.

By the end of the year, Globe was handling 18 million messages a day, roughly 26 per customer,
more than all the messages sent in Germany, France, Italy and Britain combined.
After Globe's network ground to a halt a few times under the load, it
instituted a 1 peso-a-message charge to promote "responsible" use of text
messaging. That cut the average messages per customer in half, but the
number of Globe customers has doubled. Generation Text, as the media
dubbed it, was born.

Aaron Favila for The New York Times

Sending text messages does not require making a call. People merely
type in a message and the recipient's phone number, hit the phone's Monica Serrano, a Manila
send key and off it goes to the operator's message center, which student, had a laugh over a
forwards it to the recipient. Because messages are exchanged over the text message she received
frequency the network uses to identify phones rather than the on her cell phone.
frequencies their owners talk on, messages can be sent and received
the instant a phone is turned on -- and can even be received when a
phone call is in progress.

Sending text messages by phone is an irritating skill to master,

largely because 26 letters, plus punctuation, have to be created with only 10 buttons. Typing the
letter C, for example, requires pressing the No. 2 button three times; an E is the No. 3 button
pressed twice; and so on. After the message is composed, it can be sent immediately to the phone
number of the recipient, who can respond immediately by the same process.

People using phones for text messages have developed a shorthand similar to that found in
Internet chat rooms. "Where are you?" becomes "WRU." And "See you tonight" becomes "CU
2NYT."

People have different styles of keying in their messages. Some use their index fingers, some one
thumb, some both. Two thumbs is the way to go for Rowena Bayangos, who sat outside a cafe
recently thumbing in an entire letter to a colleague from a draft she had written out longhand.

"I don't have to go home or to an Internet cafe," she said. "And I'm just spending a couple of
pesos."

Then there are the truly sophisticated users, like 19-year-old Tristan Sta. Ines, who sat recently
outside a Subway sandwich shop, a Marlboro Light cigarette dangling from his mouth and dark
sunglasses on his head, tapping away with one thumb without even looking at his phone. "I got
used to it because I always text while I'm driving," he said.

The advantage of sending text messages over talking becomes obvious in a noisy bar or on
Manila's noisy streets. But in addition to conveying what cannot easily be heard, sending text
messages by phone is providing Filipinos with a way of conveying what isn't easily said in Asia's
only predominantly Catholic nation. "You can express yourself more freely," Bola said.

Bola, for example, said he once asked a woman out on a date in a text message over his phone. "I
was too shy to call her," he said. There's flirtatious text messaging, text foreplay, text sex and
even text pornography. For some young lovers, text messages over the phone are the first time
they share those magic words, "i luv u."
Josephine Aguilar, a sociology professor at the University of Santo Tomas, says such behavior is
common. "That's our culture," she said. "We call this 'hiya.' It means shy or ashamed."

Text messages over the phone are a high-technology veil, protective yet provocative. The
nonconfrontational nature of such messages also makes them a hit in Indonesia, where politeness
often calls for ambiguity. The same goes for Japan, where NTT DoCoMo has 7.3 million
customers using the Web on cell phones, sending an average of five e-mail messages a day.

Not all the messages Globe's customers send are appreciated. The Philippine Department of
Education finally had to ban the use of mobile phones in grade schools to stop kids from
cheating: they were sending text answers to one another during exams. Police complain that
drivers busy typing in traffic are causing accidents.

Some people busy themselves striking up exchanges with complete strangers by guessing likely
Globe subscriber numbers (the first four numbers are all the same). And because pre-paid cards
give people a temporary telephone number that is not linked to a name or billing address, they
also confer an anonymity that can be abused. People have been known to receive lewd messages
and threats by text.

April Fool's Day rained tasteless text jokes. One said the Pope had died, while another said
President Joseph Estrada had. A political joke followed combining the two, asking its readers to
pray the former was untrue and the latter was.

Protests followed from the Presidential Palace and the church. "Love of neighbor for the love of
God is applicable even to texters young and old alike," Archbishop Oscar Cruz wrote to a local
newspaper.

The jokes have not stopped, with current events offering new grist. "Muslim guerrillas have
kidnapped Estrada," goes one of the latest. "They say that if they don't get a large ransom, they
will let him go free."

The guerrillas may not have President Estrada, but they have a direct line to his troops. Many
soldiers eager to keep in touch with their families while fighting in the southern island of
Mindanao took cell phones with them. To make sure they could get a good signal, some brought
two.

With no regulations against carrying the phones into the field, Gen. Rio said, cellular phones
made their way to the front and, in the heat of battle, turned up in enemy hands, complete with
their memory full of phone numbers.

It wasn't long, the general said, before rebels started lobbing text messages at soldiers. He
declined to share any examples, but said they tended to be "childish."

"It's the lighter side of this war," he said. "But who knows, maybe it's better that they fight by
texting."
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