We all know as evidenced by the SMSs that pour in during the Eid holidays, that the short text message has become a popular way for friends and families to keep in touch — especially on festive occasions. It is a global phenomenon. In Sweden, 32 million SMSs were sent on one network during the Western New Year 2009-10, which corresponded to nine SMSs per subscriber. According to Gartner, SMS numbers worldwide are expected to reach 2.3 trillion in 2010.

Sending an SMS is complicated in that a short message must cross different networks, and involves various operator billing and charging systems, and all types of mobile phones. But people want to be able to send messages instantly and all the time. The first SMS was sent in 1992 and now more SMSs are sent per day than there are people on Earth.

Ericsson supports networks that serve more than two billion people and Eva Elmstedt, head of Customer Support at Ericsson explained that network maintenance and support is highly important during peak times. “Keeping our phones, computers and other devices connected is regarded as a basic human need,” she said. “An outage today is not an option. You will have a family crisis basically if this happens.”

Elmstedt noted that today’s youth are highly engaged with digital technology.

“We have statistics that show that the 21-year-old today entering the workforce has actually sent and received 250,000 emails. They’ve been video gaming for 5,000 hours. They’ve been on social networking online for 3,500 hours. It’s a tremendous change,” she commented.

And Ericson believes that demand will just keep growing. “This is not the last we’ll see,” said Elmstedt. “It’s just going to continue like this.”