The Philippines and SMS

textually.org reports:
"The Philippines has become the first country in the world where mobile users spend more on data services than on voice, according to a leading research company," reports The Guardian via Smart Mobs.

"The average data revenue per subscription in the Philippines now stands at $3.90 (£2.08) a month, compared with $3.50 a month for voice - meaning that data accounts for 53% of the total.

The main reason for the Philippines figures is that texting is very cheap compared to voice calls, so subscribers use texts as their main means of communication and their spending on voice calls is very low. A text costs only about 1 peso (1.1p) compared to about 20 pesos per minute for prepaid voice calls. "

The Philippines, the first country in the world to use text messaging to topple a former president, is often referred to as "the texting capital of the world" because texting was free in the between 1994 and 2000 because operators' billing systems were unable to charge prepaid users for this service."

Tags: mobile, SMS