Text messaging
Europe

In 2003, Europe followed next behind Asia in terms of the popularity of the use of SMS. That year, an average of 16 billion messages were sent each month. Users in Spain sent a little more than fifty messages per month on average in 2003. In Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom, the figure was around 35–40 SMS messages per month. In each of these countries, the cost of sending an SMS message varied from €0.04–0.23, depending on the payment plan (with many contractual plans including all or several texts for free). In the United Kingdom, text messages are charged between £0.05–0.12. Curiously, France did not take to SMS in the same way, sending just under 20 messages on average per user per month. France has the same GSM technology as other European countries, so the uptake is not hampered by technical restrictions.

In the Republic of Ireland, in 2012, 1.5 billion messages were sent every quarter, on average 114 messages per person per month. In the United Kingdom, as of March 2012, over 1 billion text messages were sent every week. The Eurovision Song Contest organized the first pan-European SMS voting in 2002, as a part of the voting system (there was also a voting over traditional landline phone lines). In 2005, the Eurovision Song Contest organized the biggest televoting ever (with SMS and phone voting). During roaming, (that is, when a user connects to another network in different country from their own) the prices may be higher, but in July 2009, EU legislation went into effect limiting this price to €0.11.

Mobile service providers in Finland offered contracts in which users can send 1000 text messages a month for €10. In Finland, which has very high mobile phone ownership rates, some TV channels began "SMS chat", which involved sending short messages to a phone number, and the messages would be shown on TV. Chats are always moderated, which prevents users from sending offensive material to the channel. The craze evolved into quizzes and strategy games and then faster-paced games designed for television and SMS control. Games require users to register their nicknames and send short messages to control a character onscreen. Messages usually cost 0.05 to 0.86 Euro apiece, and games can require the player to send dozens of messages. In December 2003, a Finnish TV channel, MTV3, put a Santa Claus character on-air reading aloud text messages sent in by viewers. On 12 March 2004, the first entirely "interactive" TV channel, VIISI, began operation in Finland. However, SBS Finland Oy took over the channel and turned it into a music channel named The Voice in November 2004. In 2006, the Prime Minister of Finland, Matti Vanhanen, made the news when he allegedly broke up with his girlfriend with a text message. In 2007, the first book written solely in text messages, Viimeiset viestit (Last Messages), was released by Finnish author Hannu Luntiala. It is about an executive who travels through Europe and India.
detectable_format:title, startend:quotation