Charleston behind on its T9ing (That's cellphone text messaging to the rest of you)

Published July 24, 2008 at 3:52 pm by Ken Hawkins.

Filed in: News, Business, Offbeat, Verizon, texting, growth, cell phones.

Charleston behind on its T9ing (That's cellphone text messaging to the rest of you)

Flickr user moriza

The more absurd the circumstance, the more enjoyable texting is.

Verizon wireless reported it’s South Carolina customers sent nearly 500 percent more text messages in April than they did for the same month in 2006. It shot up some 550 percent in Charleston to 32 million texts sent and received. Not too bad you may be thinking.

Well, Greenville shot up 614 percent to 116 million texts sent and received. Charleston, get with it.

Here’s the numbers:

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	April 2006	April 2008	Growth
MyrtleBeach	869,369	6,052,970	696.2%
Oconee County	1,169,231	7,695,988	658.2%
Anderson	4,049,746	25,071,855	619.1%
Bluffton	1,201,672	7,415,188	617.1%
Greenville	18,940,327	116,337,769	614.2%
Lancaster	2,911,462	17,395,918	597.5%
Columbia	10,466,816	59,005,549	563.7%
Charleston	5,743,749	31,698,177	551.9%
Sumter	795,009	4,228,361	531.9%
Florence	2,395,952	12,209,855	509.6%
Cherokee	2,197,220	11,153,016	507.6%
Greenwood	5,399,356	27,274,291	505.1%
Calhoun	2,461,166	11,315,133	459.7%

Keep in mind the numbers are for Verizon customers only, so there’s all kinds of caveats that make this unscientific. But any way you look at it, people love the texts.