Americas Telecommunication Indicators 2000 contains 140 pages of text, reference information, statistics and directory of telecommunication operators in the region and is published in English and Spanish. The services segment accounted for almost three quarters of global telecommunication revenues or some USD 800 million. Mobile communications is driving growth and now accounts for 24 per cent of the total service revenues, up from just 3 per cent in 1990. Although revenues from the fixed telephone network continue to dominate the total market, its share has fallen significantly, from 90 per cent in 1990 to 61 per cent in 1999. The GSM Association predicts that 10 billion messages a month will be transmitted by year-end 2000.
Most operators charge for each SMS message sent.
The OECD found that the average price of an SMS message in the OECD is 16 US cents with the lowest being 3 cents and highest 25 cents. Another interesting finding of the OECD report is the difference in SMS usage between postpay and prepay users with the latter using it significantly more. For example, the prepay customers of the UK mobile operator Vodafone send 8 times as many SMS messages a month as postpaid clients. This is because the heaviest SMS users tend to be young and thus more likely to not qualify for postpay service. The research also found that one third of those aged 15-24 years old sent over 20 SMS messages a week.