SMS growing five-fold in U.S.

SMS or text messaging does not have much to do with VoIP, but its stunning usage is a stark reminder that the simple often works best when it comes to personal communications. SMS is also a great example of an application no one saw coming.

The IP Carrier blog reports that CTIA researchers have found U.S. SMS traffic volumes have boomed over the last four years growing at 37 percent a month. "As of December 2006, over 18.5 billion text messages are sent every month and that number has grown by 250 percent each year for the last two years," the blog reports.

Some have predicted SMS may plateau as more and more phones are email  and IM enabled. This is not so according to Verizon Wireless which is predicting  text messages to grow nearly five times from 400 million per month in July 2005 to over two billion per month next year. The U.S. was relatively slow to the SMS phenomena but is wasting no time catching on.

For more:
- IP Carrier carries the report in its blog

Related articles:
- Carriers lose SMS revenue of $4.9B Report 
- Worldwide SMS revenues to hit $67B Report