It's estimated that some 100 million texts were sent in the UK over the New Year.

Yet mobile services outfit Sicap reckons that by sending just four text messages over this busy time is enough to provide it with an insight into the performance of the UK's mobile phone networks.

Four (4) "researchers" sent a (1) text message each to a pre-agreed mobile phone number at midnight on New Year's Eve. Each researcher was subscribed to one of the UK's big-four operators.

According to the results of this trial, only three texts actually arrived. The fastest took 16 minutes while the slowest was four hours and forty-three minutes.

Excluding the missing text, Sicap reckons that New Year's texts took an average of two hours and two minutes to get through (based on just four texts out of an estimated 100 million don't forget).

Usually, texts take just seven seconds to go from here to there.

According to Sicap, this test just goes to show how "UK mobile operators struggled to cope with the strain of millions of New Year's texts".

Extraordinary. ®