Everyone knows the Philippines is the Texting Capital of the World. But if you don't know it yet, on the Globe:

Talk isn't cheap in the Philippines; there are only about 3.3 million wired phone circuits in this country of about 80 million people. There are another 10 million cellphones here, but companies don't offer the large baskets of ''free'' minutes that we Americans take for granted. So SMS is the least expensive way to chat, popular with everybody from cab drivers to corporate executives.

[Compared to the U.S. which hit a billion SMS messages for the whole year last year] Filipinos crank out a billion SMS messages every 10 days, making this country the texting capital of the world. Nobody believes that Americans will ever catch up. But then, there's no reason why we should. Between our nation's excellent wired phone system and its cheap cellphone networks, it's easier to make a regular voice phone call than to peck out a text message on a numeric keypad. Most of us have Internet-connected computers at home or at work. We can use these to send e-mails and instant messages, instead of fussing with a cellphone.