If a flood of late "Happy New Year!" texts wakes you up at 2 a.m. Saturday, blame the millions of people expected to clog up cellular networks at the stroke of midnight.
A sharp rise in Canadians texting could result in roughly twice as many New Year's texts going out this year over last. Telus spokesman Shawn Hall says the company saw nationwide messaging increase by "a few hundred million" texts per month in 2010.
"The increase is actually pretty astonishing," he said. "We handled about 2.7-billion in January of 2010 and 5.4-billion in December."
"Based on this, it's safe to say that we're going to see twice as many tonight as we did last year -- but we've also doubled our network."
Marina Guy, spokeswoman for Rogers Communications, says the company handles about 3,000 texts per second on average. On New Year's, that number jumps by 30 to 40 per cent.
But that doesn't necessarily mean delays. Hall didn't expect holdups for users within the same network, but said there's no accounting for international texts or messages travelling between different service providers.
Text messages are sent through a channel of cell towers and antennae, which are located at intersections and rooftops throughout urban and rural areas.
The texts first travel to the tower closest to the sender, before moving to SMS (short message service) centres that pass them on to a tower near the intended recipient.
"If you're texting someone down the street on the same network, it will be instant," Hall said. "It all depends where they are and what network they're in."
Courteous texters should give special consideration to time zones, too.
"When we celebrate in Vancouver, we're the last. Our friends in Toronto will have gone to bed hours ago," Hall said. "If they haven't, they're not going to feel good the next morning."
