(31 December 2007 5:00 pm)

MUMBAI: This New Year's Eve, Verizon Wireless is expecting to send and receive more than 300 million messages in the US in the 16 hours between 12 noon and 4 am on New Year's Day.

Verizon Wireless vice president and chief marketing officer Mike Lanman said, "Last New Year's Eve, our customers sent and received more than 284 million text messages and nearly 4.75 million multimedia messages, so we fully expect to surpass the 300 million mark tonight."

Verizon currently offers more than two dozen phones that allow customers to send and receive text, picture and video messages, including two of this year's holiday favorites -- the Venus(TM) and Voyager(TM) by LG.

During the third quarter of 2007, customers exchanged more than 721 million picture and video messages over Verizon Wireless' network and sent or received nearly 36.5 billion text messages.

In June 2007, Verizon Wireless customers set an industry record as more than 10 billion text messages were exchanged in a single month.

Headquartered in New Jersey with 68,000 employees across US, Verizon Wireless claims to serve 63.7 million customers. The company is a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone.