Last June, the Senate Judiciary Committee began hearings on texting. Included in the discussion were executives from AT&T, Verizon along with othere the focus of which was the nature of charging for text messages. Though the hearings were interesting, the real headline is in the data surrounding texting itself
In 2008 over one trillion text messages were sent in the US. According to AT&T, texting grew from 2.4 billion in January of 2007 to over 31.1 billion in January of this year. The direct costs per text were estimated at approximately three tenths of one cent each, with an average charge to the telephone subscriber of 1 cent per text message. Approximately 420 text messages can fit the bandwith it takes to have a one minute conversation.
Why is text messaging growing so much? Well simply because it is efficient. The text message forces the sendor to be succinct (you have only 160 characters in which to get your point across) and it can be very quickly consumed. Over the weekend, by oldest daughter told me that she just heard a voice mail left by her sister 4 days ago. This isn’t to say that she’s disengaged, just that voice mail is not the preferred mean of communication. She went on to say that occassionally she’ll get text messages from her friends telling her to check her voice mail. Texting is simple, succinct, fast, and it’s semi-perminant. You can save a text message to refer to later on, not as easy in voicemail.
In a world in which information flows so effortlessly and at near zero cost, texting speaks more of the future than the past. Who know that email would become “so yesterday” so soon.
Tom
