Chinese to send 14 billion holiday SMSs

A boy stretches in front of rows of red lanterns at a temple fair in Beijing, as part of Chinese Lunar New Year festivities, February 19, 2007.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's cellular operators estimate Chinese customers will send around 14 billion Lunar New Year text messages on their mobile phones during the week-long holiday, the Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

China Mobile (0941.HK) and China Unicom Ltd. (0762.HK), the country's two largest mobile operators, said they had prepared their networks for the message deluge to avoid any disruption in traffic, Xinhua reported.

During last year's new year holiday, Chinese sent 12.6 billion short messages in 8 days, more than 30 messages for each of the 400 million mobile phone subscribers, the agency said.

The mainland now has more than 460 million mobile subscribers.

Chinese sent 430 billion short messages with their mobile phones last year, bringing income of about $12.8 million for mobile operators, said Xinhua.

(US$=7.74 yuan)