Whole day and everywhere, a lot of people in the Philippines holding a cell phone in their hand and watching it while moving their thumb over the apparatus.
What are they doing? They hardly use the phone to make phone calls, so it must be something else. The answer is: They are sending each other Short Message Text. In Europe we call it short: SMS, here in the Philippines they call it just “Text”. When they say: “text me” they mean send me a message by cell phone.
When you look at them they are “texting” all day and everywhere: in the Jeepney, in the stores, walking in the street and while driving their car. I even saw one day someone driving a motorcycle while texting. While walking on the market or along shops you can see lots of employees or owners, who are not busy at that moment helping customers, just using their phones to see if they receive a text or composing one. The same you can see in Jeepneys and busses: people watching their phones and reading or sending messages.
How do you know when they are texting: It’s easy. They hold the cell phone while their thumb is moving very fast from left to right and back over the manual. Because they all do it, I call this phenomenon their National Sport.
A lot of people use even more than one cell phone.
Why is it so popular in the Philippines. I think it’s the fault of the telephone companies. The regular network is not reliable because the offering companies are not working together. The rate to make a phone call is too high. Calling or texting from one network to the other is more expensive than to the same network. 
Cell phone calls to the main network costs about 15 pesos per minute. Every text message costs only 1 peso to the same network and about 2 to 3 pesos to a different network. That is the reason that people often have more than one cell phone, so they can text to their friends and relatives the cheapest rate (depending on the network of that relative.) That is also the reason that cell phones which can accommodate two SIM cards are very popular. If one owns a cell phone like that he usually doesn’t need a second phone.
I am sure that there is no country in the world where they use this text messaging service more than in the Philippines.
In shopping malls and other shopping centers you can find many small stores selling aside from new or used phones, all kind of cell phone materials like batteries, new housing, loaders and other stuff. They often offer also phone repairs and unlocking. In Greenhills Shopping Center, Ortigas Ave., San Juan, M.M. (I’m told this was the very first shopping mall in the Philippines) you can find a whole floor filled with small cell phone stores each measuring 4 to 6 square meters. There must be more than 100 of these cell phone stalls, one on side of the other. Also in other shopping malls and near markets you can find lots of those cell phone stores.
In every sari-sari store and on other places they can buy “load”. This load is an amount of money that can be used to make these messages. Just for 10 pesos they can send already some messages. But you can also buy pre-pay cards of 50, 100 and more pesos. There’s only one disadvantage of the system here: Your pre-paid money expires after a few days. If you buy for 10 pesos it is only valid for one day. If you did not use it all within 24 hours the left over is gone and you have to buy again. A pre-pay card of 100 pesos is valid for 10 days.
Several restaurants where young people like to go have loading stations to reload the cell phone of their customers. Also at the airport I’ve seen a loading station. And when they are talking about: LOW BAT, they mean that there is no more power in the battery.
It is also common that your relatives (extended family) is visiting you and when entering the house already asking if you have a loader, because they have LOW BAT. 
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Earlier comments
Bruce
americanindavao.com
bruce@americanindavao.com
Submitted on 2009/03/29 at 1:01pm
Jan,
One mistake you made was “walking in the mall.” Something that gets me upset is in most cases, when someone gets a text and wants to reply, they practically stop walking in the flow of traffic to reply. Many times I have almost walked into a person. Also when the cell phone is raised to view, their ears turn off. No matter what you say, they will not hear you.
I have no patience having to reload or watch how soon my load will time out. So I buy a 500 peso load on Smart. It is good for 3 months and you get 82 free “in network” texts.
Reply Jan
Bruce, You are completely right. Even in a supermarket with their cart in the middle of a path, blocking the lane they start texting, and they don’t hear a thing.
About the costs for cell phone: well we don’t use texting that much, we also have landline. But thanks for the tip.
Filipino time:
As most Filipinos would agree, Philippines is the txt capital of the world.
I agree the Philippines is the first country to reall use text like that. We in America are using it more and more. If you want to reach anyone under the age of 30 you almost have to send text. They don’t lile to talk on the phone.
It is amazing the quality of the cell phones that they have and live in the places that they do!
Randall,
I do not know about the USA, but here in the Philippines, people do it even when driving on the high way, or crossing the street, not focussed on the traffic and so on. It is sometimes a very dangerous situation.