Text prices: enough is enough

[psylichon]

This is a brilliant article regarding the costs involved with SMS texting (using dramatics of scale to illustrate the point), and if you can read it in America with an AT&T iPhone plan and not be infuriated, you have a much higher tolerance than I do.

http://gthing.net/the-true-price-of-sms-messages/

From the article:

SMS texting alone is a 100 Billion dollar a year (http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2007/09/sms-text-messag.html) industry!How big is that? Take all of hollywood movie box office revenues worldwide. Add all of the global music industry revenues. And add all of videogaming revenues around the world. Even all those three together, we don't reach 100 billion.
I've always wondered why I can use my unlimited data plan to go send a text for free from AT&T's website via my safari browser, using TONS more data and AT&T bandwidth than I would by simply texting it from the SMS app. Yet I get a finite amount of those opportunities or else pay a healthy monthly fee for the privilege of doing, on a native app, what I can otherwise do on the web. Oh yeah, and they're raising the per-txt/overage charges again.

And why in the world are we charged for incoming texts? Does any other country in the world have mobile carriers that operate like this? Are we paying a stupid tax or what?

Read the article. It's buggin' me.

What can we do?

[psylichon]

Maybe I should have posted this in General, because I know folks here are interested in this. Oh well.

Bump.

[jjvaldez]

i saw that, the math is insane, but i guess it does not matter to the unlimited sms

[Hayesimus]

well i remember back before texting came out, i had a phone that was text capable and so did my friend. We would text each other all the time in class. I mean ALL the time. Then a couple months later... BAM texting came out and it was no longer free. I think its kinda silly to charge so much for texting. Especially the incoming which you really can't help. I haven't read the article yet, but does it say how much it costs AT&T to relay the texts? I wonder if they'll ever drop the hefty fees...

[Hayesimus]

just read it... THOSE BASTARDS!

[psylichon]

i guess it does not matter to the unlimited sms

Except that you're still paying $240 a year for unlimited use of a service that, for all intents and purposes, should be absolutely free. Especially if you already pay for an unlimited data plan. It's just stupid.

[S-Man]

Wow, talk about rapeage. This should really be addressed by the proper governmental authorities because it's straight out robbery.
I'm paying $30/mo. extra (in addition to my family plan) for unlimited data, and an extra $5/mo. for 200 texts. I've gone over the 200 limit a time or two, and they are swift about exacting their hefty charge.
And that's 200 total, sent and recieved! If someone wanted to spam me, there's nothing I could do about it. What A RipOff!
I've always been against texting though. However my circle of friends like to use it, and i've been pushed into using it because of them.

[freakydeaky dutch bastard]

"SMS messages are transfered over air made of solid gold." :tounge:

[jsntrenkler]

Except that you're still paying $240 a year for unlimited use of a service that, for all intents and purposes, should be absolutely free. Especially if you already pay for an unlimited data plan. It's just stupid.

Great point and thank you for the link to this article. Texting should be free, it sucks that it isn't. You would think that the telecom industry makes enough money locking us into our contracts "another issue." Thanks again for sharing.

[danipoak]

And why in the world are we charged for incoming texts? Does any other country in the world have mobile carriers that operate like this? Are we paying a stupid tax or what?

What can we do?

I lived over in Poland for a time and you were not charged for incoming texts or incoming phone calls. A lot of my friends whenever they would run out of minutes they would do what they call "knocking a signal" where they would just let it ring once and let me call them back if I had minutes. I was suprised when I moved back here and was charged for every damn thing.

My sister texts her boyfriend non stop and when they first started dating he didn't have an unlimited plan so he called up the service and had unlimited texting put on. The bastards never told him it didn't take effect until the next month. He went along texting like mad that whole month and racked up a $980 phone bill. They were completely unforgiving too.

[S-Man]

Gotta love the commies.
(That was a joke. They're not commie dictators in Poland right? I was just throwing out a generalization of foreign countries as a joke.:rolleyes:)

[acosmichippo]

so now how much do you hate apple for trying to convert everyone to email instead of texting?

I've always been opposed to the SMS lifestyle myself. Comes in handy once in a while, but overall... No thanks. Soon enough people will have email on their phones, and it will become obsolete.

[danipoak]

Gotta love the commies.
(That was a joke. They're not commie dictators in Poland right? I was just throwing out a generalization of foreign countries as a joke.:rolleyes:)

Haha no, they're Catholic dictators now!

[Elbacanazo920]

so now how much do you hate apple for trying to convert everyone to email instead of texting?

I've always been opposed to the SMS lifestyle myself. Comes in handy once in a while, but overall... No thanks. Soon enough people will have email on their phones, and it will become obsolete.
With the Type of companies we have here I wouldn't be surprised if we end up paying for email also, Or if the put a cap on Unlimited Net ( Oh wait they are working on that already)

[acosmichippo]

we ARE paying for email already. That's what the data plan is for.

And $100/year for push email through mobileme suddenly doesn't seem so bad.