WASHINGTON, DC — Mobile-phone subscriber growth is leveling off in the U.S., but cell phone users are spending more time talking and texting, according to a recent report by CTIA – The Wireless Association.In an ex-parte communication with the Federal Communications Commission about wireless competition matters the commission is considering, CTIA said statistics lead it to believe the U.S. mobile market is one of the most vibrant and competitive in the world. In five of the six criteria CTIA observed, the U.S. led the world market, and it was second in the seventh category, according to the report.

Particularly impressive: 84-percent of Americans have cell phones, the CTIA report said. Growth in 2007 outpaced the previous year’s figures by only 2-percent, but the total number of subscribers in the U.S. now tops 255 million people, according to CTIA. Subscribers used two trillion minutes of talk time in 2007, an increase of 18-percent over 2006 levels.

More than 48 billion text messages were sent during December 2007 alone, representing an average of 1.6 billion texts per day. The figure represented a 157-percent increase over the numbers during the same period in 2006.

Americans also sent more multimedia and picture messages in 2007 than in 2006, CTIA noted. While a total of 2.7 billion MMS messages were sent during the 12 months composing 2006, nearly four billion MMSes were sent during the second half of 2007 alone. Revenues generated by mobile data services (all non-talk wireless functions combined) topped $23 billion in 2007, up 53-percent over the $15.2 billion generated during 2006. Wireless data revenues accounted for 17-percent of 2007’s overall wireless service revenues of $71 billion.