Submitted by Mike Grenville on Thu, 26 Jan 2006 15:19

2005 has drawn to a close on a real high note for text messaging in the UK with an average of 100 million SMS sent every day thoughout December.

The Mobile Data Association (MDA) today announced that the highest ever monthly text messaging total was achieved during December 2005. A total of 3.1 billion messages were sent across the UK GSM networks in December, that's an average of 100 million per day.

December's record monthly total follows the MDA's recent announcement of a record daily figure for New Year's Day 2006 of 165 million.

Throughout the 25th December, an average of 7 million messages were sent every hour.

The total figure for the whole year reached 32 billion, achieving the total predicted by the MDA back in September last year. 2006 is set to be another significant year for texting; the MDA predicts that 36.5 billion messages will be sent during the year, an average of 100 million messages per day.

Prior to December 2005, the highest ever total of text messages recorded was 2.9 billion in October 2005.