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In all of 1999, Brits sent one billion text messages on their mobile phones.  Now, according to new numbers from the Mobile Data Association (MDA), they’re sending more than that per week.

1.2 billion messages per week (or around 4,000 per second) is the current rate, and in an interview with the BBC, the MDA’s head, Mike Short, admitted, “It has exceeded our forecasts quite significantly.”  You can hardly blame his group, though - those are astonishing figures, and given some of the headlines related to this milestone, they appear to have caught everyone off-guard.

“Text Maniacs Send Billion Messages A Week,” states a DailyRecord.co.uk article.  “Brits go text crazy,” suggests womenintechnology.co.uk.  And the AHN chips in, “Britons Addicted To Text Messaging.”

Granted, the UK’s interest in text messaging doesn’t look like much next to China’s - about 8.3 billion text messages are sent each week in that nation.  Still, since computers are more prevalent in the UK, it’s interesting to see that cheap rates and text messaging’s overall convenience have also caught on there.

The MDA and Short say that Brits are on track to send 52 billion messages in 2007.