Tonight we ring in the New Year. At midnight many of us will reach for our phone or Blackberry and voice or text our best wishes to far flung friends and family.

If you plan on sending those wishes via text message in the UK, you can expect an electronic traffic jam that may delay your mobile SMS, photo or video message for as much as six hours according to a study commissioned by Palm.

Last New Year’s Eve in Great Britain, the strain on the network at midnight caused 70% of all mobile text messages to be delayed. And 23% were delivered over 6 hours later.

In the US, Verizon Wireless says that last New Year’s Eve, their customers exchanged over 284 million text messages and nearly 4.75 million multimedia messages. This year they expect to exceed 300 million messages exchanged from 12 p.m. today until 4 a.m. tomorrow, New Year’s Day.

We’ll be using video conferencing to connect with my wife’s folks in Belgium as the clock strikes midnight over there.

That New Year’s Eve video call has been a tradition for perhaps 8 or 9 years now. The video calling systems we’ve used have changed and the quality has improved over the years but every December 31st, at 6:00 PM eastern in the US, we see my inlaws on live video as they greet the New Year six hours ahead of us.

Being able to share that experience over a video call has been one of the delights of the magic of personal video conferencing.

Try arranging a video call to someone tonight and raise a toast for a happy, healthy and prosperous 2008.