Fastest text in the west

Text-mad phone users are going head to head in the UK's first nationwide competition to find the fastest mobile texter.

Organised by wireless portal iobox, the competition asks entrants to type a 160-character txt msg into their mobile phone.

iobox sayz: IM the Uks fastst,funkyst,speediest,gr8st@txtin!A*!a2nd2nun wndr txter-NO1s qickr thn me!Adctd2txt IM so fst its mgic!! Ha I no ur v.jlus of me!! so:-P.

Finalists are likely to face stiff competition from the youth market, where mobile penetration has increased five-fold in the last two years.

Josh Dhaliwal, executive partner at mobileYouth, a forum to educate technology suppliers and buyers on the mindset of the youth market, said: "I don't think that anyone anticipated the youth and mobile phone phenomenon, so there's no real precedence. This makes an awareness of the issues concerning security, data protection, health and cost of the service even more essential."

The UK officially passed the one billion SMS message mark in August of this year.