Don’t send inappropriate text messages on your mobile phone. That was the key message that AMTA Chief Executive Officer, Chris Althaus, gave to ABC Radio’s PM program today.

“Messaging is a great way to communicate, but do not send offensive or threatening text, voice, picture or any other sort of message because it is a criminal offence to use a mobile phone to menace or harass someone. Also receivers can save messages and readily identify the sender,” he said.

Mr Althaus was commenting on the issue of inappropriate text messages after the dumping of a candidate in the New South Wales election after he send a text message that was deemed to be inappropriate.

In other news today, it was reported by Reuters that China’s cellular operators estimate their customers will send around 14 billion Lunar New Year text messages on their mobile phones during the week-long holiday. During last year’s new year holiday, the Chinese sent 12.6 billion SMS messages in just eight days. This works out at more than 30 messages for each of the 400 million mobile phone subscribers.

The Chinese sent 430 billion SMS messages last year. According to Australian figures, we sent 10.25 billion messages last year.