Chinese telecoms companies have geared up for what they expect to be one of their busiest periods ever as China enters its New Year season. Across the week long holiday, which began February 18th on the Gregorian calendar, Chinese telecoms companies are expecting 14 billion well-wishing SMS messages to and from the country’s 460 million mobile subscribers.

This wave of text messages is as good an indicator of growth in the Chinese telecoms sector as any ; last year the 400 million mobile subscribers sent 12.6 billion messages across the period ; more than 30 messages for each subscriber, said Reuters.