Asian evidence says the best explanation for the take up of texting is the ratio of price of a voice call to cost of a text. Is this also the explanation for the UK? BBC NEWS | Technology | Britons sending 1bn texts weekly Britons are now sending more than one billion text messages per week according to the latest figures from the Mobile Data Association (MDA). The figure is 25% higher than a year ago and is set to shatter forecasts for how many text messages have been sent to and from handsets this year. That weekly total is the same as the number sent during the whole of 1999.