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80,012 Text Messages In One Month
webguru4god writes "According to an article on AZCentral.com, a man in New Zealand sent an average of 2,580 text messages a day for a whole month to protest his cell phone provider cancelling their unlimited text messaging plan. I recently received a faulty cell phone bill for $2000 claiming that I sent 40,000 text messages in one month, which I thought was physically impossible. But apparently this man has doubled that number and managed to get 8 hours of sleep each night for the month!"
You can send tons of text messages with programs like this
And with sites like CellularOneWest you can send up to 12 at a time.
It was on the news here. He was sending the same message to all the users in his addressbook with the send to all function of his phone. So if you have a hundred ppl listed it can add up pretty quick.
At that time, some phones were even only capable off recieving them (or just resetted if you sent "large" SMS with 160 chars).
So try to calculate how much 1 MB of transfer it costs with texting. GPRS is a little bit cheaper (at least in Europe) and UMTS will cut some costs as well. Problem is that you can not send direct messages as all the data connections get private IPs within their networks (and they firewall a bit)
... which he believed would be in force until 2010.
Speaking as a New Zealander, I find it ridiculous that anyone could believe that Telecom's "$10 Text" promotion would last for several more years. When the promotion began, it was very clearly advertised that the promotion would only extend to the end of 2003. I think that Telecom's customers have been lucky that they have extended the promotion for an extra 6 months.
To put it quite simply: Telecom New Zealand advertised it as a time-limited promotion. People who believe that it should continue indefinitely are confused, and believe that they should get something for nothing.
In Australia we pay an average of 20c to 25c per SMS message.
Considering how little data is traversed to wager the cost, I can't see how its anywhere near reasonable.
Our postal service will physically send a letter to anywhere in Australia for 40c - which requires much more signficant investment in resources. And yet somehow telcos feel they can charge -that- much.
Whenever I can, I prefer to pick up the mobile to call somebody, if you stay on the phone for no longer than 30 seconds its about the same cost. And the call is calcuated per second airtime.
What do other countries such as Asia, Europe and America pay?
Tell us!
For 100,000 messages that accounts to NZ$8000 per month. The Telecom deal was $10 per month so they would lose $7990 per month for a customer that texted that much to Vodafone!!
Telecom didn't think this out before they offered the deal, have lost shitloads of money, and are now backtracking furiously and blaming "spammers".
My phone has the ability to store messages... the article says he sent the same message repeatedly. It's a matter of two clicks on my phone to bring up the stored text message and send it. Rinse and repeat.
RTFA. :) At the time of sending he still had unlimited text messages for $6.95 a month. These messages were sent before they stopped the unlimited text messages.
:)
Now he'll only get 1000 text messages for $6.95
Well thats exactly what they're doing now, defining the rules and giving people a warning before it happened. I say bravo to the phone company for being honest and up front.
As for Rogers cable as an ISP... if you have a freaking cap then tell your users!
Actually the story is inaccurate - the text caps only came into action a few days ago. The guy actually spent the last month of the "all you can text" promotion to send his 80,000 texts and therefore was only out of pocket by NZ$10.
Uh - no bill. His protest was in the last month of the text deal that Telecom NZ had, so it was all their loss, not his. He still got charged the same total as the previous months.
That may be the case over there, but over here local calls are charged per minute.
I like cell phones because they allow me to make/take calls anywhere anytime instead of being tied to a landline. If I don't want to be disturbed I can switch on the silent mode. If someone has something important to tell me while I'm in the movies, for instance, he/she can leave a message. With the caller ID (no extra charge) I can also screen my calls. Having a cell phone as definitely improved the quality of my life.
I don't know what you mean by hidden costs? I know perfectly well how much my calls and SMSs cost (incoming calls are free) and, if I like, I can check my bill any time by texting to a number.
If you don't trust yourself not to "go over" or you're worried about your kids' cellphone bills you can sign a deal where you set a hard limit ($50, for instance) for the service.
The owls are not what they seem
1000/30 = 33 texts a day. For personal use, is it enough? Most people I know don't come near that many.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
And then there is the possibility to send text messages from a computer in a variety of ways, including connecting your mobile to it.. A computer can also generate and send messages and a quite incredible rate..
... of sms'es..
1. Take your phone. Make a distribution-list which includes everyone on your phone capable to recive textmessages. (say 100 people)
2. Write a large sms. As you might know, one sms can contain 160 chars. So when you type a sms over 160 chars, it will be seen as two sms. Write one big sms (that really count as four).
3. Send this one to the distribution list: You have know sent 400 sms in just a few minutes.
4. To be sure they all got it, resend it!
5. Reply to everyone that answers, and resend again to they who don't anser!
It might just take you three minutes to send almost 1000 smses. Good luck!
Thanks, Mr A.C., for injecting a little local perspective! While I'm not a Telecom NZ subscriber, allow me to explain a little more...
The two main phone networks in NZ are Vodafone and Telecom. Vodafone initially dominated the texting market, with 20c-per-text prices using its GSM network. In order to reclaim some marketshare, Telecom introduced its "$10-per-month for unlimited texting deal" last year, and advertised it nationwide.
Here's the kicker. Telecom's network is based on CDMA, and to switch from Vodafone to Telecom you have to purchase a new phone and get a new phone number. Lots of people I know were spending hundreds of dollars a month on text charges with Vodafone, so justifying the expense of ~$300NZD for a midrange Telecom phone and switching over made sense economically.
During this period, I don't recall Telecom mentioning any time limit on the deal whatsoever. Anyone who paid more attention than I to the extremely small print at the bottom of their TV screens can feel free to post a rebuttal, but many people received an assurance from Telecom store clerks in person that the $10 deal was guaranteed for a long time (years to decades) and correspondingly switched over to the Telecom network, expecting their initial outlay for a new phone to eventually pay for itself.
Fast forward to 2004, and Telecom pulls the bait and switch on its subscribers, causing a lot of them to get very angry and send as many text messages as they could before the $10 deal terminated as a protest.
I can see where Telecom is coming from, as they do pay interconnect agreements with Vodafone and have to pay approximately 8c to 14c (can't recall the exact figure) per text message that terminates on Vodafone's network, and as such the $10 deal is uneconomic in the long term. And they do still have a monthly deal, but it's capped at ~500 messages last I heard, which is less than many people require (especially when forwarding one message to several people; it adds up rapidly!). However, I still feel that Telecom's behaviour with regards to advertising their phone deal was a little unethical, and I can see exactly where the person in the article is coming from...
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1) Not sure where you are, but in most places it's 160 chars/msg.
2) Almost all providers charge a "termination cost" per message entering their network (UK providers charge 3p per terminated message). Unlimited deals rely on the fact that most text messages generate a response, thus bringing that revenue back.
I'm a long time Vodafone subscriber (switched _from_ telecom before their $10 text deal) and am incredibly happy with the service Vodafone provides.
Now when Telecom announced their $10/month for unlimited text almost everyone I knew could see into the (near) future that Telecom was going to pull the old "bait and switch" with this whole deal.
I would constantly put the sales reps that accosted me at my University on the spot by asking in a loud voice when the deal will end. They said "indefinate" while umming and ahhhing which then I would say "So, you could change it next month, right?".
Now while this "unlimited" texting went on, people started to wonder how Telecom could afford this kind of madness, but Telecom in New Zealand controls a huge majority of Phone lines, toll calls, ADSL connections and controls one of the largest ISP's in NZ (Xtra). We knew where they were getting their money from they were subsidising their losses in the cell phone division from their other (more profitable) departments.
So as more and more people started to poke their nose into Telecom's business, we knew their next move was coming next. $10/month for 500 texts. Now the deal is still a huge savings in money, but it's just the fact that Telecom changed the rules while the game was being played and that upset a lot of people.
Vodafone cannot compete with those prices, so Vodafone chose to start pushing their interactive GPRS technologies such as Vodafone Live! (neat wap portal) and PXT (picture messages). Now even though I could save $50/month I simply do not trust telecom! I'm an account holder with Vodafone (not prepay) and I just will not deal with Telecom more than I have to, lest they choose to rip me off.
NZ has crazy interconnect fees. The result is that a typical pre-pay plan its the same or cheaper to call London than a phone in New Zealand. The plan my kiwi sim is on works fine in Australia with no extra roaming fees but its just as cheap to call a land line in the UK or US than a another mobile in NZ with the same company. With Orange in Oz, it costs half as much to call Canada as it does to call a landline in the same town your in.
I think the real reason was economic -
In order for people to send an SMS from the Telecom to Vodafone network (BTW, these are the ONLY two mobile networks in this country), Telecom has to pay Vodafone $0.13, per SMS.
When you're only charging your customers $10 a month for a potentially unlimited stream of messages to another network, it only takes 77 before you break-even.
Given the popularity of SMS in this country, I'd say that most customers who went for this deal were doing a shit-load more than that.
Phone companys have to pay the other phonecomapanys for sending an SMS though there network..
Its not like that internet backbone monopoly Ameriaca has over the rest of the world where all ISPs share there bandwidth for next to noting.
each one of those SMSs could of cost the phonecompany 5-10cents..
Not that im saying the company didnt deserve it,
unlimited is after all, unlimited..
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Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
It's worse than 3 times as expensive. Three minutes of standard GSM-encoded voice traffic equals about 9600 * 60 * 3 / 8 = 216000 bytes of traffic (ignoring encoding etc, since we're looking at payload). Those 140 bytes (7 bits * 160 chars) in an SMS message are 0.065% of that amount of data. Round it up to 0.1% to allow for reliable delivery and routing overhead, that's 1000 times as expensive.
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From the perspective of another New Zealander, I doubt the following statement, "Lots of people I know were spending hundreds of dollars a month on text charges with Vodafone"...
The voice mobile service in NZ is more expensive than most developed country. Here links to the most generous plan from Vodafone that is the major rival against Telecom. It is something like NZD$40 (about US$25) for 300 min of offpeak min. $1/min on peak hours... Forget about the daytime plans... They are 5 times more expansive. Since voice service is so expensive, most secondary and university students rely on text message for communication... Many of them are on prepaid as they cannot afford the monthly fee.
Here comes to the point: many of them found $40 expensive, do they have the few hundred buck for texting? Students in general don't earn much. Some university students receive allowance from the government at a rate of $500/month. Accomodation can easily be more than that...
IMO, the current chaos is created by the "all you can eat" mentality. I know many secondary students start sending bulk forward messages, joke etc... Before then, texting was for something more crucial like "I got stuck in the traffic", "Let's meet at xyz 7pm tonite"... It really catches Telecom off guard... We cannot exclude the possiblity that some of the texting records are broken with the aid of computers.
Telecom is the bully in the local telco market... But, in this event, I don't blame them for cutting the $10 unlimited texting deal... It is clear since the first day that the $10 deal is a limited promotion with time limit...
When I got a cell phone recently I was asked for some very personal info such as social security number, drivers license number, date of birth. When I asked why they claimed it was so they could "find" me if I charged up a big phone bill and then refused to pay. I didn't think they needed to start a dossier on me so I asked several of these phone service providers if I could get my account capped at some low amount. I even offered to leave a deposit for this amount. They said they won't do that. I am still mystified as to why. Credit card companies will do it. They will even question charges that appear fraudulent. But a telecomm company won't?
I ended up getting one of them to agree to remove my social security number from there computer file by zeroing it out after performing a credit check. I suspect it is still in their computer though. Does anyone know why a phone company would actually need your most personal information?
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
At a maximum rate of 20 cents a text message, Ray would have tallied a bill of more than $10,060 for his protest.
Hate to be the grammar Nazi here, but the story is not inaccurate -- "would have spent" is the third conditional, which refers to "a condition in the past that did not happen.". So it's not saying he spent the money, it's saying that if he had NOT been on the unlimited plan, he would have spent it.
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Ah, so you're one of those people who don't like to talk to people?
It's not that I don't like talking to people. I just can't stand the flat interaction that goes on through the phone. It's even flatter to me than a communication method like slashdot. I will admit that I am more reserved around many people than most.
And you know mobile phones have caller-id too.
Yeah I know. The silent mode on my mobile phone is not completely silent. So, off it stays. I understand why people have/use (mobile)phones. I just prefer not to use them, so I don't. I do like the security of having a mobile in case of emergency or having auto trouble in the middle of nowhere.