SMS Usage Continues to increase

Steve Largent, president and CEO of CTIA, released some new SMS and data statistics at last week's CTIA show in Vegas. In June of 2005, over 7 billion text messages were sent across carriers in the US. This is a 154% increase over the previous year. Also, over 50 billion text messages were sent in the last 6 months, which represents a 96% increase over the previous 6 months. At the end of 2005, over 208 million people own a cell phone, a penetration of around 70%. Finally, wireless data revenues reached a total of $8.5 billion in 2005, a 86% increase over the previous year.

6 digit US Short Codes available NOW

The Common Short Code (CSC) program continues to expand rapidly. Over the next couple of weeks, CTIA will start allowing the registration of 6 digit short codes. This will vastly increase the current pool of 600,000 5-digit short codes by adding 1,000,000 6-digit short codes.

UPDATE (6/1/06): 6 digit short codes are now available