Telefónica O2 in the UK just announced on the New Year, 1,900 text messages were sent every second.

Over a 24 hours period, 166 million SMSs were sent, with their records ending on 7:30 January 1st. No news if this has set a new record and no one was on hand from O2 to deny or confirm this. Unfortunately no other UK carrier has made public yet their stats producing a more rounded figure.

Just to put this in comparison elsewhere on the planet we went a search’in, where stats came in of a similar nature showing text messages are now preferable to actually calling someone on NYE.

In Sweden over 24 million messages were sent during New Years Eve, over the state owned network Telia. Their other main carrier Tele2, showed a number almost reaching 28.4 million – this hit a new record for that country.

The Netherlands Vodafone division had an increase of 52 percent from last year, with their figures for text messaging coming in at 22 million over that night. T-Mobile, the other largest faction recorded a third increase on the previous year’s takings, with 19 million SMSs being sent.

More closer to home, Orange in France clocked up 66 million in just four hours from 9pm to 2am.
The other major network in France SFR hit 18.1 million SMSs, up 36 percent on last year.

Whilst Bouygues Telecom saw between midnight and 1am 15 million text messages, on a 100 percent increase from the year before.

In Belgium 78.3 million text messages were sent to the Belgian network, where only the year before just 59.3 million SMSs were sent.

In Switzerland they saw 54.5 million text messages sent over all their networks. 25 million SMSs went across the Swisscom carrier until midnight, with their Orange network seeing 13.6 million.

Thailand hit the 50 million SMS mark, and surprisingly one million MMS were transmitted from December 31 2008 to January 1 2009.

All told, text messaging seems a hit this year and rightly so. Why spend the next hour at midnight calling people to wish them a happy new year, whilst going straight to voicemail each time as everyone else has the same idea.

Instead, fire off a few dozen SMSs and hope everyone does the same thing. Or in the case of Thailand, take a picture of yourself wishing people a happy new year (?) and send that instead.

Happy New Year

From sources – Sweden, Netherlands, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Thailand

As we head towards the end of the year I’ve been thinking about some of the mobile companies and applications I’ve looked at this year and what’s missing from their line up. So, I’ve highlighted the key service enhancement I’d like to see from each of them in 2009.

The mobile VoIP space is a particular favourite of mine because it offers low cost calling, service innovation and improved coverage (for me, anyway). 2008 has been an exciting year for new services – I’ve used a few of them and been very impressed with what each has to offer. However, no one out there has got the whole package for me yet. Truphone has added more platform support with iPhone, BlackBerry and now iPod Touch joining Nokia S60, plus Truphone Anywhere to deliver Truphone service outside WiFi coverage. I’m a big Truphone fan but the primary enhancement I’d like to see is flat rate tariffing to deliver simplicity and predictability. Ideally a range of tariffs offering the choice of in-country calling or international would be good. Another favourite at the moment, DeFi Mobile, launched this year with superb call quality and an all-inclusive international flat rate tariff. DeFi’s initial service line‑up includes almost everything I need, with some neat features like simultaneous ring and call forwarding included in the standard tariff. What’s missing? Inbound and outbound SMS on my UK 020 DeFi number is a must to give me a single mobile number across both voice and SMS.

Niche providers in the mobile space continue to challenge the rates charged by the big operators for international calling and roaming. Swap your SIM card over to MAXroam and get great rates when roaming, especially outside the EU. Now that the EU has mandated lower roaming voice rates and is looking at data, I’d like to see MAXroam come back with finer pricing for EU roaming. Rebtel delivers great pricing for international calls and it’s big plus is that it just works from any mobile handset – no software, no SIM card swapping. Local in‑country phone numbers are becoming more and more useful with a number of service providers starting to offer them for a small monthly fee. The ability to add an inbound number to my Rebtel account that delivers calls to one or more of my registered numbers would be a nice addition and another revenue stream for Rebtel.

SpinVox has shown us what the future of voice mail looks like with it’s speech to text product. I’m surprised that none of the big UK mobile operators has yet embedded SpinVox in their propositions, so I hope 2009 will be the year that one of the operators decides to differentiate their voice mail from their competitors. Inevitably pricing will be pivotal here so I hope everyone’s sharpening their pencils!

Lastly I’m going to mention Evernote. Evernote is now my preferred repository for notes and anything I want to remember in the future. I’d like to see Evernote implement greater consistency in functionality and the user interface across the various versions.

So guys, a few ideas and now it’s over to you!

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Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.