In what can be described as the techie equivalent of asking everyone in China to jump up and down at the same time to see whether it starts an earthquake, two teenage lads from Nottingham want to be bombarded with as many SMS messages as possible to "stress-test the UK's mobile phone network".

Thomas Scott, 15, and his pal, David Swinstead, 16, said they will record the event and even rig up a microphone to record the incoming beeps to see what happens to the Motorola C520 handset. The experiment -- The Big Bad Bo! 2000 -- is set to take place at 1:30pm BST on Friday 14th April 2000, during their lunch break. Before double French. Perhaps.

To take part mobile phone users needs to the send the three character message "Bo!"* via an SMS message to 0796 8678684.

"We promise we won't harvest your mobile phone number," said Thomas. "We won't sell it to anyone or even write it down. "All we want is the message. 'Bo!'," he said.

A rather bemused spokesman for mobile telco, Orange, said he'd never heard of anything like it. "The first ten messages will clog up the phone's memory -- that's it," he said, adding that it would have little or not impact on Britain's mobile phone network.

A technical bod at Motorola said the handset could take an additional 15 SMS messages but then the lads would have to start deleting some to receive others.

Undaunted by this news, Thomas and David told The Register that they will still go ahead with the test. Can't wait for the results. ®

* bo -- meaningless youth culture word used to replace other words. Similar to dooberry, as in, "what's that dooberry/bo doing over there", or "what's the name of...you know who I mean...doobery/bo."