Beijing Residents Sent One Billion Text Messages in a Single Day

Published on: 1st Jan 1970: 1:33am

­Around one text billion messages were sent in China's capital, Beijing last Wednesday on the eve of the Spring Festival - or Chinese New Year, but the flood of greetings actually caused complaints from recipients saying there were too many.

China Mobile said its Beijing users sent 770 million text messages that night, which was up about 13 percent year-on-year. China Unicom reported over 143 million messages, and it is estimated that China Telecom made up the remaining 80 million.

China Mobile's Shanghai users sent 920 million text messages on the same day, up 20 percent, while in Guangdong province, the number of messages sent Wednesday night went up by over 23 percent year-on-year, a report by the semi-official China Daily newspaper claimed.

"God knows how many text messages I received on Spring Festival Eve, it must have been over a hundred. I even received many from people I don't even know," Yin Ni, who runs an online store in Beijing, was quoted as saying.

"I never send such messages because I don't consider pressing the button saying 'send message to all contacts' is sincere. People should realize that the only beneficiaries are the mobile phone operators," said Yin.

This year is the Year of the Rabbit. In Mandarin, the word "rabbit" is pronounced the same as the word "to" in English, so "Happy to you" has become one of the most popular greetings this year.

On the web: China Daily

 

Tags: [beijing]  [sms]  [text message]  [telecom]  [China]