Here we are at the end of the year and there is no end in sight to the ubiquitous text message. The sheer amount of text messages sent should let the average person know that someone is making a great deal of money somewhere. Get more information here on the state of text messaging.

While there are plenty of people out there sending a few text messages per day, some are really taking it full tilt. For 2009, there were a total of 1.5 trillion text messages sent or received during the year. That equals out to around five billion text messages per day. An average American teen sends out fifty text messages a day. Those teens who are not in the “average” group send out more than one hundred per day, twice as many. Other people are saying that the average teen sends out 3,339 messages per month, which equals out to more than 111 messages per day. Apparently, some teens are more “average” than others.

If you get even deeper into the habits of Americans you find that they do much more texting than talking with their cell phones.

Back in 2008, the population was typing out an average of 357 messages per month and making 204 calls during the same time. Way back in 2006, those numbers were 65 for the text messages and around the same number for calls. It is also interesting to note that the number of phone calls from 2006 to 2008 were roughly the same. All this was with the cell carriers sending the price of a text upwards by 100 percent. Apparently the text message is worth twice the price, for users.

Now we have the unfolding of next year upon us. It is estimated that for 2011 there will be seven trillion text messages sent during the year. If each message is going to cost a conservative five cents apiece, that is going to be a bill of $350,000,000,000 dollars to text messagers. If that is too many zeros to count, it is $350 billion dollars. If the text messages are going to be still somewhat conservative ten cents apiece, that number goes up to $700 billion dollars that text messagers will be charged. I thought this was an economic crisis ?

The big surprise is that the money is not needed. Most people do not know that a cell company could be giving out those text messages for free and it would not hurt them. A SMS ( text ) message does not take away from the bandwidth needed for phone calls. That is what makes a text message limited in length to 160 characters. It does not surpass the amount of data needed to set up a call.

The channel uses space whether or not a message is inserted. In other words, the channel is already on, if you send a text message, you are charged, if you do not, you are not charged. You could put it this way; the cost to the cell carrier is zero, but the cost to the sender is around ten to twenty cents. Now multiply that by seven trillion times. Its crazy.

For the answer to the question; “How Many Text Messages Were Sent In 2010 ?”, the answer is around 6.1 trillion. This is from the the International Telecommunications Union, a United Nations run organization.