Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe BEIJING, Feb. 18 (UPI) -- The top two telecommunications operators in China Sunday estimate nearly 14 billion text messages will be sent over the Lunar New Year holiday. China's news agency Xinhua said statisticians from China Mobile and China Unicom estimated that during the seven-day holiday, Chinese citizens will far surpass the daily text message average of 1.2 billion as they celebrate. Advertisement A total of 429.6 billion text messages were sent last year through mobile phones in China. The predicted onslaught of text messaging over the Lunar New Year celebration could also surpass that of the last Spring Festival. Over that holiday, a total of 12.6 billion text messages were sent out as each mobile phone subscriber sent or received at least 30 text communications. Those increases followed the overall rise in mobile phone use in China, increasing 5.64 million monthly in 2006 to a total of 460 million subscribers, Xinhua said.
