OXFORD, United Kingdom-European mobilephone users continue to provide evidence of their seemingly insatiable appetite for short message services. The GSM Association, which claims a staggering nine billion SMSs were sent worldwide in August, has again revised its end-of-year SMS forecast from 10 billion messages per month to 15 billion per month.
German users are leading the way in Europe by sending over one billion messages per month, with France, Italy and the United Kingdom sending around 500 million per country. This represents a 900-percent increase in Germany since April 1999 and a similar increase in both France and the United Kingdom.
SMS use, according to the Yankee Group, does not seem to be greatly troubled by the pricing for each message sent; the firm said tariffs vary from country to country and between operators in the same market, and the variations do not seem to impact use. The per-event based pricing model of SMS is said to make it easier for users to calculate and offers clarity, as opposed to pricing by bandwidth.
