Carriers Pushing Texters to Bundled Plans

Text messaging is quickly becoming one of the most profitable and highest growth offerings for carriers in the US.

Text messaging is booming. Nearly 80% of U.S. 18- to 24-year-olds use text messaging, says research firm In-Stat. Text messaging -- formally SMS, for short message service -- set records in 2007, says the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association trade group.

Along with this explosion comes massive revenue growth.

Portio Research says global text messaging revenue will hit $67 billion in '12 vs. $52.5 billion last year.

Casual text messaging users tend to have rate plans that are pay-per-use while heavy texters are moving to bundled rate plans that offer unlimited text messaging. Mobile services such as ChaCha's text answers are only serving to further accelerate use of text messaging.