China sends 420,000 txts a minute

Chinese mobile phone users have let their fingers do even more talking this year, with the number of SMS messages sent on track to top 220bn for the year, up by more than 50bn on 2003 the Ministry of Information said. That works out at about 420,000 text messages sent every minute of every day. According to ministry officials, calculated at a rate of RMB0.1 per text message, the business generated a total of RMB17.6bn (US$2.12bn) to the end of October. A spokesman said the surge in text message traffic had made the SMS service a "pillar for value-added transactions in the mobile industry."