Slashdot Mirror
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!"
I think they're missing the bigger story: How did this man grow two extra thumbs to key in those 80,000 messages? ;)
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
hi2u want big penis message back plz
I think this entire 'unlimited' offering is silly...it seems we're seeing more and more cases of some group of customers that basically exceed whatever the company expects the realistic extreme to be, and the company simply creates a cap. An ISP might offer unlimited bandwidth, the the minute a few people start managing to pull down 20gig a day, or say, a phone company customer base starts sending 10,000 text messages a day, we start seeing things like this. We know there's a reasonable extreme to be expected in any service like this, and it'd be nice of the companies responsbile just gave a good limit (1 gig of free e-mail, anyone?) that most people won't get close to hitting, but is big enough to keep users coming in.
I know nothing
Little over a year ago, there was an MMS war between the telcos here in Norway and all MMS messages were free of charge. The price war continued for half a year and I save a lot on using MMS to send text instead of SMS.
so his plan was that by showing them that more messages were sent when the company charged for them , somehow this company would decide against the extra income and return to free text messages. Hmmm, well we can't all be geniuses.
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.
Considering the cost increase he'd probably be paying for the charged messages, the costs for carpal tunnel surgery will likely outweigh any savings he would have had if his campaign had worked.
The cap doesn't seem that unreasonable as it is probably protecting other text messaging users from spam.
According to the article, some users were sending 100,000 messages per month. This is the equivalent of 3,333 messages per day. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of legitimate uses for this many messages except for commercial dispatch (for example) but in those instances, those companies should be expected to pay. I mean, as a messaging user, I sure don't want to subsidize a dispatch company for their commercial usage of the feature.
Perhaps the limit is a little too low but I personally don't see many people using an average of more than 33 messages per day. Note this is average and not, for example, one bad day with the server going up and down all the time.
Sunny
Be my Friend
What i've always wondered on my plan, is why text messaging costs more than phoning. I'm on pay and talk at the moment, while phoning costs like 5 cents per minute, and texting costs 15 cents per message. It's crazy! Texting takes longer to type, you can only get like 140 CHARACTERS per message, and yet it costs 3 times more! I dont know, but texting should be like internet, you pay a certain fee per month, and you get unlimited messaging. What cost for bandwidth does a little bit of words cost???
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.
*looks at $500 cell phone bill* and I thought my 1200 a month was bad.... although I also was pissed when they cut my unlimited to 500 a month
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".
It's a PHONE, how about you just call the person instead? It seems so pointless to waste you time thumbing in silly little messages that people can barely understand instead of just punching in their phone number and saying what you need to say.
Buckethead
The article says 'he repeatedly sent friends a message reading: "Hi. How are you?"'
2,580 times a day he did this. I am guessing he is now short a few friends...
#DeleteChrome
How did this guy manage this? Is he a mutated nerd like us who have grown extra fingers due to the radition from our constant computer use? Damn I should've never got that plastic case....
Have you metaroderated recently?
(Then again he could have an amazingly active social life with that many texts!)
I have an app that sends about 140 messages to customers every day and it takes about 10 minutes to do that. In couple of days you could easily send that amount of text messages.
I'm trying to figure out the effectiveness of this protest. The message he sent is 16 bytes. I'm not sure how big SMS headers are but lets assume about 30 bytes. So thats 46 bytes per message. Times 80,012 = 3,680,552. I don't know exactly how much bandwidth etc is allocated for text messaging within a cellular telephone carrier, but three and a half megabytes in a month doesn't seem like much. Lets look at average traffic. The article states that he slept 8 hours per night over what appears to be a 31 day period. That would mean he is awake 16 hours per day. 2,580 messages over 16 hours is 161.25 messages per hour, 2.6875 messages per minute, or ~.045 messages per second. 46 bytes x .045 means he is only sending an average of 2.07 bytes per second. Pretty small beans. It would have been just as easy to send a 160 character message 80,012 times as it was to send his short one. Perhaps something like DoS was not his aim, but the article states that this was an "attack." I don't know too many people that need in the tens of thousands text messages per month that can't afford to pay more than $6.29/mo. Despite all this, I do believe that companies should hold true to their claims or offerings. I doubt that Mr. Ray's 2.07 bytes per second made them LOSE any money, but as seen in the article they sure could have made a shitload off of it. If a company is going to offer something like that, they should be prepared for power users taking full advantage of it.
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
3 SMS messages per minute doesn't sound like much. Assuming he didn't change the message each time, after the initial time spent writing the message, its easy to send 10 to 15 per minute to numbers in the phone's address book.
I have clients who run SMS gateway machines, and each phone can send 30 to 50 messages per minute. Of course, this is computer controlled, and they have a chassis with 30 phones and hundreds of SIM cards to spread the charge across many "1000 free texts per month" plans.
Back when SMS messaging was free in Europe, I wrote a crude implementation of IP over SMS. The phones were connected with serial cables to linux boxes. It took some serious tweaking of MTU, TCP timeouts, and a couple of hacked applications (sendmail and telnet) to deal with the bandwidth, latency and small packet size problems. I even managed to perform an NFS mount over SMS. But alas, once the phone companies smelled money, it was all over.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I think he misunderstood the word "protest". To me it seems like he just proved the telecoms point.
I don't feel sorry for him that he can't continue to send a text message every 20 seconds. If it was me he was sending his "hi, how are you" drivel to, my response would probably be something in the line of "Shut the f*ck up dude"
So lets see. The provider recognizes that people are abusing the system. The guy sends thousands of pages to his friends to prove people are abusing the system, and he makes the news as being the good guy because telco's are evil??
If someone started sending *ME* thousands of messages per month, I'd get a bit irate. I suppose his friends aren't exactly happy with a month of their phone beeping at them constantly. I get a bit pissed at just our server pages (sent to my phone), and those don't count up anywhere near thousands per month.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
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
... 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!
He's probably still paying it off...
Following is a link to an article in New Zealand's major daily on the company itself - may they rot in hell. Anti-competitive personified.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID =3570468
The Mothership
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.
It's New Zealand. Unlike 'old' Zealand (where I live), the New one is full of nature's freaks. Twelve-toed snakes and five-thumbed humans and whatnot.
Here on 'old' Zealand we just have freaks of society...
I once used this to exact revenge against my ex-wife. We were still married at the time, headed for divorce when she took off to Vegas, by car, with her boyfriend for a weekend of sport fscking, I'm sure.
I was obviously pissed as I knew she was going somewhere, and suspected it would be with her 'boyfriend' so I paged her, but she never returned my call.
What I did then was setup Telex (BBS Software) on my PC to dial her pager number, wait for 2 seconds, then enter my cell phone number and hang up, repeated ad infinum. It took a total of 8 seconds for each paging cycle. I knew she was leaving pager range but what did I care.
I was sending out 450 pages per hour, starting on a Friday afternoon. I stopped paging once she returned to town that Monday. I paged her no fewer than 32,400 times that weekend. What I did was a denial of service attack on her pager where she was charged 10 cents for each page over 1000 per month.
My satisfaction grew once I heard that she received a $3,200 pager bill for that month, which she never paid and I'm sure is still on her credit report.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I think what he was trying to proove was that it costs the phone company pretty much nothing to route a text message, which is a stupid protest because the phone company probably didnt even feel it and is laughing over the morning newspaper. On my phone it costs between about 5p and 10p which is still a rip-off, but what really pisses me off more than anything, is the priority at which sms traffic gets given, sometimes it can get lost for several hours and you have to think HOW FUCKING HARD IS IT TO ROUTE 160 BYTES?!? I swear the leaching phone companies use the internet for some of it, especially if it goes over-seas which pisses me off even more - you put something that will fit into a single packet through a free network and then charge nearly a dollar?!? yes i know they are just trying to make money, but the point is, and i think that guy is with me here, WE are the union of phone users and if we all push our weight and say to the phone companies FUCK YOU then we can get what we want and they can be are bitch slaves. Ok or they could just make it much cheaper, why do we put up with this? this has to be the most poor yet most widely used mobile service in the world and yet we take all its bullshit? 160 characters! thats all you get in this day and age!? This is their little money cow, rip the customers off and they will stand for it because no-one is organised enough to mass protest it.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
You know, if you keep sending "Hi. How are you?" to everyone you see, eventually you'll make a few new friends. Some of them might even be beautiful women.
I thimk you mispelled the word, "spam".
This seems like a stupid way to protest. I'm going to protest Dairy Queen not offering free unlimited ice cream!! Everybody meet me there to buy an ice cream!!
I guess this guy's business plan is:
1. Buy lots of company A's product while, at the same time, protesting it.
2. ???
3. Profit!
That must be some of that "new economy" stuff.
IANAL, especially not a New Zealand lawyer, but at least by US standards, this is false advertising.
Look at the details of the plan that they advertise.
Text Messaging $0.20 - But you'll pay no more than $10 a month
There is no fine print. There is nothing to lead me to believe that I cannot send 100,000 text messages for $10.
--
I don't know if age factors in to it. I'm 22 years old and refuse to use phones as much as possible(within reason[cell and otherwise]). I think they are rude, impersonal and obtrusive. If I want to speak to someone I'll do it face to face.
I do have both a personal landline and cell phone. The cell phone stays off unless I must make a call. The landline doesn't get answered unless I'm expecting a call or the caller-id is someone I want to talk to.
I hold a similar philosophy about instant messengers. I always have AIM running at home on away status and at work I have IBM Sametime. Sametime is pretty unused unless I'm wasting time while looking busy[during the worst time of the week - 3-5pm on Fridays] or need to check with someone who's on a long duration phone call.
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.
Qwest was screwing me over for a number of years by bundling services I didn't want into my land line. They would actually charge me $6 a month because I wasn't getting long distance service!! I cut my land line mostly so I wasn't giving money to Qwest, but adding my wife's cell phone on to my plan actually saved us about $40 a month in basic service and long distance charges. I had many more unneeded features forced upon me with my landline than with my cell. I guess I should have said this before, but I use my cell phone for calls, the occasional text message, and voice mail, not for games, pictures and all that other crap. I'm not paying extra for that stuff in my plan though - Verizon actually lets you pay just for the services you'll use.
Y'know, understanding cell phone usage may just not be obvious to you because of your lifestyle. I live in Colorado, and we actually go out and do things (including weekend travel) very frequently. If we're trying to meet family or friends coming in to town, it's much easier to have them contact us this way, and we're not pinned to the house if we need to run errands or something.
Let me give you another example. I'm teaching college classes at night as a second job. The dean called the other day while I was at work to offer me options for courses to teach for summer session. I waited to decide and responded that evening, and I didn't get the class I wanted because another professor had taken it. However, if I had answered him on the spot I would have received the class I wanted. It would not have been feasible to check voice mail at home because I wasn't expecting the call, and I'm not one to waste time calling a voice mail box that's usually empty.
It's fine to not understand why people desire or need cell phones, but it really surprises me that someone with the nickname "ModernGeek" can't see how they would benefit some people with active lifestyles. If they don't fit your lifestyle, that's great, but with my traveling, it's awesome that I can call from wherever I stop for lunch to keep in touch with family or avoid stupid "per call" charges at the occasional hotel. If you pick the right plan for your lifestyle, you can really save yourself money or headaches. I'm well aware that I'm paying close to $1000 per year for two phones, but it's worth it to me to be able to stay in touch with my family, who also get out of their houses frequently.
Land lines are so much easier,
My landline phone only remembers the last number I dialed. My cell phone remembers the last 10, and has 200 more in the address book. (I can also store numbers on my landline phone, but I can't attach names to them, so I'd have to make a separate record of what number is which person... too much hassle.)
So there's lots of times when it's easier for me to pick up my cell phone to make a call, even when I'm home.
you have unlimited calls to all your friends in your area code,
I live in Los Angeles. About three of my friends are in my area code. The city itself has four different area codes.
Granted, many of those are still not toll charges, but some of them are, and I can't tell by the area code which will be. My friend in Van Nuys (818) is local, but my friend in Reseda (also 818) is a toll call.
and you can sit and chat with them all day like it is nothing if you want, because it isn't going to cost you a dime more or less todo so.
While with my cell phone, I can do the same to my friend in San Jose or my mom when she's out of town in Detroit or Nigeria, and have the same experience... because it's a very, very rare occurence for me to go over my monthly minutes.
With a cellphone, you have all these funky plans, unneeded features, and hidden costs.
My cell phone bill is the same each month, within a few cents. My landline varies more.
I have no "unneeded features." I get a package that includes the features I want and will use. I don't want text messaging, so my package doesn't include it. I do want unlimited long distance, so my package gives me that.
A second landline can be had for $15/mo, so you can have two numbers, one for you, and one for the kids.
I can add a second line to my cell phone for $9.99/month. Oh, and, that $15/month doesn't include about $5/month in taxes, surcharges, and fees you'll be paying. (Same is true of the cell phone, but since many are a percentage of what you pay, it's even cheaper by comparison.)
All for about $35/mo, and you don't have to worry about "going over". If you have family in another state, just get a calling card, or get a good long distance plan.
Or, get a good cell phone plan for about $40/month, and pay nothing extra for long distance or "local toll" at all.
We cancelled long distance service on our landline, because AT&T started charging us $6/month even when we didn't use it. We never use it, because it's free from our cell phones.
So, it sounds like you're woefully underinformed about cellular service, and you're paying for your ignorance. Good on you.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
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.