CTIA: 243M mobile users in U.S.

CTIA president and CEO Steve Largent opened his organization's annual CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment event with a quick pulse check of the industry's subscriber growth. According to Largent, as of June 2007 the U.S. wireless consumer market surpassed the 243 million subscriber mark, representing roughly 81 percent of the overall national population. In addition, U.S. subscribers now send an average of 1 billion text messages every day, transmitting 28.8 billion messages in June alone.

"This is an industry that continues to grow, continues to innovate and continues to diversify," Largent said.

In a follow-up press release CTIA said its recent survey found that wireless data service revenues for the first half of 2007 rose 63 percent year-on-year to $10.5 billion. Now data revenues account for 15.5 percent of all wireless service revenues. The survey also found that wireless subscribers in the U.S. sent 2.6 billion MMS messages during the first half of 2007, which is nearly twice as much as last year. The survey found that wireless customers used more than 1.1 trillion minutes in the first half of this year, up 18 percent year-on-year.

For more on the survey:
- read the press release