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It's easy to see why SMS would be popular with the Finns. After all, we're talking about Nokia land. But why are texts immensely popular in the Philippines, where the daily minimum wage is below $7? Texting can be an expensive proposition in the US. SMS plans do grant big discounts, but the average $0.10 per text rate is still too much.

Here in the Philippines, it costs $0.02 to send an SMS--by default. That's why many Filipinos would rather text than call. And local service providers have learned how to provide reliability, an experience shaped by many years of trial and error. Send a text and your contact will receive it seconds later. Unfortunately this focus on SMS sometimes comes at the cost of call quality, but it makes sense to concentrate on a heavily-used service.

It's safe to say that service operators who want to popularize SMS with their users should take a page or two from the Philippines. They should make texting an extremely cheap and reliable affair, so that people will no longer think that texts are too costly nor undependable for their daily communication needs.

The irony is that as the rates go lower, usage will increase. In other words, lowering prices will turn out to be much more profitable on the long run, since the volume will go up.

Disclaimer: I am of course, a Filipino.