Verizon report: Text-messaging explodes in N.C.

Statewide, the carrier's customers boosted text-message traffic by more than 600 percent from April 2006 to April 2008, Verizon said.

The study compared text messages sent and received only by Verizon customers. The company cited a national industry report, however, that said messaging nationally had gone from 14.4 million in 2000 to 48.1 billion last year.

Verizon said the boom in the number of text messages sent and received included a rise from 15.6 million in Charlotte to 103 million two years later, from 8.6 million to 56.2 million in Raleigh; from 10,022 to 2.8 million in the Rocky Mount-Wilson area; and from 112 to 400,197 in Roanoke Rapids.

In Fayetteville, the hand-generated traffic went from 3.4 million to 18.6 million in the period.