Still ringing in the new year? Try texting
As the ball drops this New Year's Eve, a record number of revelers will hit their keypads, sending festive text messages and emoticon kisses to friends and family using their cellphones.
The annual text message surge is becoming as much a part of the holiday as champagne and fireworks, with many countries around the world posting record-breaking text message spikes year after year. Almost as predictable are network "meltdowns" and hourslong message delays.
Tomorrow night, a record-high texting surge is expected in countries across the world, according to projections by Airwide Solutions, a mobile messaging infrastructure company based in Burlington.
The company predicts 125 million New Year's text messages will be sent in the United States, 200 million in the United Kingdom, and 200 million in Beijing and Shanghai -- even though Chinese New Year is later in the year.
For a growing number of people, the cellphone screen is the new holiday card -- a way to send a simple, timely message to friends .
Charlie Schick , who moved to Finland from Grafton six years ago, says the messages stored in his phone from last New Year's give him a "warm, friendly feeling."
"The fireworks go off and you're picking all the people in your contact list to send them to," said Schick , 40, who plans to send out about 100 text messages tomorrow night. " It's wonderful when you get one. It's just -- I thought of you at this moment." That means season's greetings from friends in the United States pop up on his cellphone, hours after midnight.
As cellphones have become ubiquitous, text messages have become an easy way to say hello to friends at exactly the right moment.
A survey commissioned by T-Mobile USA this fall found that 35 percent of young adults sent or read an e-mail or text message under the table during a holiday gathering. Sixty-five percent of all people said they used mobile phones to keep in touch with family over the holidays; less than half said they used mail, like holiday cards. People 18 to 22 are nearly four times as likely to use a cellphone over holiday cards or mail.
Jay Seaton , chief marketing officer of Airwide Solutions, said that the company made its projections based on historical data, number of cellphone subscribers, and the average number of text messages sent each day.
He said the all-time messaging high will not only be a record but will also test the networks, which will need to be ready for the surge.
Researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles studied New Year's Eve 2005 and found that for a cell provider in India, the message arrival rate for the last few hours before 2005 began saw a stead y increase, reaching almost eight times normal traffic .
But this year networks are being improved to deal with the flash of messaging, and providers ranging from Verizon Wireless in the United States to Cell C in South Africa say they are prepared.
Rachel Katwan , 24, of Brooklyn expects to get 10 to 20 messages from friends. On Christmas, a friend sent a group text message, wishing everyone else Merry Christmas, but wishing her a "Happy Monday," because she's Jewish. "You can get a plethora of messages all at once," she said. "Maybe that'll make the family event you're snoozing through a little more fun as well."
Carolyn Y. Johnson can be reached at cjohnson@globe.com. 
