Australia an SMS mad nation says new report

Stan Beer
Monday, 22 June 2009 04:46

IT Industry - Market

A number of studies have shown that SMS is by several orders of magnitude the most expensive form of common communication, far more so than any other data or voice service.

An SMS of less than 160 characters, which costs from 20-25 cents, uses a miniscule amount of bandwidth - approximately 100 bytes, 0.1KB!

Like elsewhere in the world, Australians are paying more than $1000 per 1 MB of data transferred by SMS. This is thousands of times more expensive than using mobile 3G networks to send data over the Internet.

Yet Australia, where the number of mobile phones, approximately matches the nation's population of 22 million, continues to fill the pockets of mobile operators in increasing numbers, a fact that makes the operators increasingly chirpy.
 
According to social researcher and futurist, Mark McCrindle, this report is an interesting reflection of Australia’s wider lifestyle trends.
 
“Telstra’s State of The Nation report reveals the uptake and influence of mobile technology on Australians, particularly texting. The fact that one in three prefer texting to other communication forms signals the natural fit of this technology to our increasingly time poor, busy lifestyles,” McCrindle said.
 
Telstra Country Wide’s General Manager for Melbourne, Patrick O’Beirne agreed.
 
“Texting has become an indispensable part of our everyday lives.
 
“As a valued form of communication Telstra has undertaken the State of the Nation research to track Australians’ texting nature – the how, when, where, what and why. This has revealed some interesting results and social insights about Australia as a text crazy nation,” Mr O’Beirne said.
 
In other texting trends, Australians said picture messages were popular, and use picture messaging on their mobiles most while travelling (44%), buying houses (33%) or at the birth of their children (33%).
 
The trend for prolific texting seems to be causing Australians trouble in the romance department though. One in four Australians said they discovered their partner was cheating by reading a text message – and a further 20 per cent had accidentally sent a text meant for their partner or lover to somebody else.

Something not explored in the report, however, are the dangers that SMS poses to the financial well being of young people, especially teenagers, who are among the most prolific texters. Studies have shown that uncontrolled use of SMS in the past has saddled teenagers with thousands of dollars of debt.