The amount of data sent over the world's mobile phone networks surpassed the volume of voice traffic during December of 2009, according to Ericsson. The figures have come from Ericsson's own network measurements.

Approximately 140,000 Terabytes per month of both voice and data traffic was sent worldwide in December last year.  Ericsson's findings show that global data traffic grew 280% during each of the last two years and is forecast to double annually over the next five years. During the same two-year period, traffic in 3G networks surpassed that of 2G networks.

The GSMA, which represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry, has launched its own spam reporting service for text messages. At the moment it's just a pilot scheme and is being operated by AT&T Mobility, Korea Telecom and SFR.

Online security company Cloudmark will operate the GSMA Spam Reporting Service. It'll analyse SMS traffic submitted by customers of participating networks via a short code of '7726', which spells SPAM on most mobile phones.

The latest mobile subscriber forecasts from ABI Research show that worldwide GSM subscriber growth is slowing and is expected to stop by the middle of next year. However, 3G subscriptions are increasing, with 2009 seeing year-on-year mobile broadband growth of 43%. At the end of December 2009, there were 271 million mobile broadband subscribers worldwide.

Overall, global cellular subscription numbers passed 4.35 billion at the end of 2009, a 10.4% increase from 2008. Global cellular penetration is now estimated to be 66% – although this varies between 140% in Western Europe, 93% in North America and 52.5% in the Asia-Pacific region.