The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) has a habit of publishing the number of short messages (SMS) that had been sent over the New Year in Switzerland. New numbers follow a new year.
According to NZZ, 2010 has seen 116.1 million messages. I had recorded the total in 2008, with some fun estimates such as the overall time spent typing those messages. In 2008 the total was 106 million. There were 6 million more in 2010 than 2009. Thus, 2009 must have seen 110.1 million messages. That’s +3.8% for 2009 and +9.5% for 2010, an average of +5.05 million, or +4.8%, each year (2008 = 100%).
The estimate for overall monetary cost in 2010 is CHF 17 million, according to comparis.ch. For 2008, I had an estimate of CHF 21.2 million. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, just raised $16 million to power Wikipedia for another year. As an alternative to New Year text messages the Swiss could as well fully fund Wikipedia for a year.