The UK now has a text message donation number that enables mobile phone users to donate £5 to the Disasters Emergency Committee Haiti Earthquake Appeal.

Texting the word GIVE to 70077 on any UK mobile network will donate £5 to DEC. Customers are charged £5 plus their standard network SMS rate, so the full £5 goes to the Haiti appeal.

LG Electronics MobileComm USA Inc – the US part of LG's mobile phone business – hosted the inaugural LG Mobile World Cup in New York this week. Competitors took part in various challenges while typing phrases on LG mobile phones. The winning team that sent the fastest, most-accurate SMS messages was Young-Ho Bae and Mok-Min Ha from Korea.

From next week, most people using their mobile phones to call the Department for Work and Pensions about state benefits won't be charged for their calls. The DWP has reached an agreement with O2, Orange, Tesco Mobile, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone to end mobile charges to many of their 0800 helplines. Around 70 helplines are covered by the agreement; they include numbers used by people making initial claims for benefits & pensions and to request emergency payments.

The latest report from researchers at Informa Telecoms & Media forecasts total revenue from mobile services around the world to exceed $1 trillion in 2013 (which equates to a slightly less impressive-sounding £614 billion).

This new record is expected despite a projected fall in voice revenue. The growth, perhaps unsurprisingly, is being driven by data revenue. Around a third of that $1 trillion total - $330 billion – is expected to come from data services. In fact, Informa predicts that data revenue and data ARPU in Japan will surpass the country's voice revenue and ARPU in 2014.