Estrada crisis fuels mobile mania

As Philippine President Joseph Estrada battles for his political life, one group of Filipinos are milking the political crisis to the full - mobile phone users.

The ongoing bribery and corruption scandal has provided good material for the country's huge craze of sending typed text messages over mobile phones.

Estrada's government has complained that text users are irresponsible

And the news of Mr Estrada's recent impeachment has only fuelled the phenomenon.

The president's broken English, his many mistresses and illegitimate children and the various properties they allegedly own have long been the butt of jokes and gossip over mobile phones.

"Texting" is reportedly more popular in the Philippines than anywhere else in the world, with Filipinos swapping an average of 50 million messages on their mobiles every day.

Army's 'text war'

The habit is not just confined to lovers and friends.

News reporters and their sources use it as a discreet form of communication. Messages have even been sent from government officials sitting in policy meetings to reporters.

Earlier this year, a military official said troops and separatist rebels in the southern Philippines were embroiled in a "text war", with both sides sending insults to each other over their phones.

The text messages themselves have also caused controversy.

There was public furore in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines earlier this year over an April Fool's message that said: "The Pope is dead; pass it on.".

Another message said the president was dead, and the accompanying joke asked people to pray that the former rumour was not true and the latter was.

The incident led the Philippine Government to complain that rude jokes and false rumours on text messages were destabilising Mr Estrada's beleaguered administration.

It also prompted the country's main mobile phone companies to take out full-page advertisements in national newspapers pleading with subscribers to be more responsible.

Texting culture

Texting comes with it own vocabulary and etiquette, just like e-mail.

Users look to shortening words. For example, "See you tonight" becomes ''CU 2NYT''.

Part of the reason why the country's 4.5 million mobile phone users have taken to it so well is because of economics - texting is cheap.

Sending e-mail through computers is more costly and telephone services through land lines can be unreliable.

The craze took off after one telephone company, Globe, introduced prepaid cards for mobile phones, making it no longer necessary to take out more costly long-term subscriptions.

Globe now has 2.75 million subscribers, more than double the number in March.

The company initially charged no fee for text messages, but has since started charging a tiny fee of one peso - a fraction of a voice call.