The US and Asia Pacific saw the greatest spikes in SMS traffic following news of the death of Osama Bin Laden, who the US has been hunting for almost a decade.
Traffic in the US spiked 18% in the 30 minutes following the announcement, however an 85% rise in Singapore powered Asia Pacific ahead in terms of the overall traffic increase, figures from mobile messaging and m-commerce provider Sybase 365 show.
Australia and New Zealand racked up the second-highest rise with traffic up 53%, followed by Thailand (44%) and Indonesia (15%).
News of Bin Laden’s death was broken by Kieth Urbahn, chief of staff for former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, via Twitter, causing a surge in messages sent via the social network. Tweets topped 4,000 per second following the announcement, making the event the second largest handled on the site after nearly 7,000 messages were sent during New Year celebrations in Japan in 2010, ABC News reports.