ISLAMABAD – The volume of messages will double to 10 trillion by 2013, around the world, as Short Message Service (SMS) being used by four billion mobile users, who send five trillion messages in 2009. This was revealed in a report published by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
It is expected that global mobile banking services will be generating 90 billion text messages per annum by 2015, as banks seek to utilise Short Message Service (SMS) as a means of enhancing customer communications and services. Much of the consistent growth of SMS is due to its ever widening adoption beyond peer-to-peer messaging, such as banking, social-networking, enterprise applications and advertising.
Pakistan has seen a stunning and remarkable growth in both the mobile subscriber base and the SMS traffic, during the past few years. According to the report, the mobile subscriber base is touching the figure of 100 million subscribers by the last quarter of 2010. International Telecommunication Union (ITU) report adds that in 2010, a total of 6.1 trillion SMS have been exchanged worldwide.
This exchange is from 5.3 billion mobile cellular subscriptions worldwide, including 940 million subscriptions to 3G services which has jumped from 1.8 trillion SMS in the Y2007. Text messaging has leap three folds in the past three years with almost 200,000 text messages exchanged every second. The Philippines and the United States combined accounted for 35 percent of all SMS sent in 2009.
In 2009, Pakistan emerged with the largest text messaging growth in Asia Pacific. In terms of annual growth, Pakistan SMS text traffic volume grew by 253 percent compared to last year during the same period, official data disclosed. Advertising seems to have attractive potential driver for SMS traffic, and it demands the operators to support campaign management and reporting requirements of media buyers and advertisers.
The report highlighted that Pakistan seems to be ready for 3G and other broadband applications because of its subscriber’s agility adeptness in using their mobile phones for data applications.
