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SMS Text Messaging & Youth Debt One
securitas writes "The New York Times' Lisa W. Foderaro reports on the impact of SMS text messaging and resulting debt on America's youth. The predictable but seldom-considered effect of the recently available technology combined with the social role instant messaging and SMS play are leading to bills that youth and parents alike can't afford. 'Many high school and college students accustomed to sending unlimited instant messages on their computers do not adapt easily to text messaging's pay-per-message format, and end up with unexpectedly high bills' ranging from $300 to $800 per month. One school principal says that 'many students were blindsided by costs associated with text-messaging and other features, like customized ring tones"
In Norway (and most of Europe I think), you can buy SIM cards that you need to "fill up". You buy a reg.code worth maybe $15, you call a (free) number and dial in the reg.code. You can then call/text for $15 before you need to fill up again. The reg.codes are available everywhere. It works great. If you dont have money, you cant call/text (except to 911/112).
Did that make any sense at all?
Really, $800/month to send what - at most, 10MB of data (can anyone actually enter that much data in one month using a mobile phone?) - over a wireless network is pretty pathetic.
$800 a month assuming it was all text messages (which the article says it wasn't, but still)
$.10 a message yields 8000 messages.
Per message limit of 160 according to the article (GSM is a bit higher IIRC) + Call it 40 bytes of header information 8000 * (160 + 40) = 1600000.
1024 bytes in a kilobyte. 1600000/1024 = 1562.5
1024 kb in a megabyte 1562.5/1024 = 1.53 MB
Or if you don't want to count header 1.22MB
Of course I am assuming they are using bytes and no compression. Actually Either figure would be a long novel so I doubt anywhere near that was sent. Some evil companies have a chat mode for SMS, where it looks like an IM convo and I could easily see that being mostly Hi, How are you? type stuff.
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
get stuff free, pay only 17.99
sms costs 5 cents to send, so 17.99 gets you 360 sms from your phone and sore thumbs
in average month, that's about 12 messages per day, which is alot from my point of view, then again, I might not be the most active sms sender
apparently it's too hard for these kids to use the IM clients in phones which work over GPRS
much cheaper than sms if you have to send more than one message
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Here are the answers to most of the questions on this thread:
- Yes, most carriers charge you to receive SMS here in the U.S. If you use SMS a lot you should get unlimited SMS. It is usually an extra $10.
- Yes, you can buy prepaid SIM cards here, or have prepaid accounts. This solves the entire problem, but if mentioned it would not allow us to whine about the "corporations".
- Yes, young adults send a lot of SMS messages. Europeans send a hell of a lot more than Americans do. Vodafone says SMS+ringtones makes up 40% of their business in the EU. FORTY PERCENT. This just proves that both the EU and the USA are filled with stupid people with too much money.
- Yes, typing a message with T9 on a keypad can be tough, but people like it. It is not "better to just call them up". SMS's are silent and can be made discreetly (not discretely kiddies).
While the blame lies with the kids and their parents for not reading the details of the plans they sign up for, i have a lot of sympathy for them: it's not intuitive that ringtones and SMS messages would be so expensive since they feel like things that should cost next to nothing.
In other words, when i found out i could download AIM for my phone, i initially assumed the price must be something reasonable, since as a programmer i know that an SMS message probably take up the bandwidth equivalent of a few seconds of voice call, and voice calls cost about $0.0022 cents per second.
Luckily before i started using it i found out that each IM (note: i didn't say "each IM session") costs 10 cents. Yikes!
It's sort of like a hotel mini-bar. When a naive person first comes across one, they think, "Oh, i could go for a soda. That costs about 89 cents, so i'm sure with a hotel markup, it'll be like $1.50 or $2." Then they find out the mini-bar price is $5. It's their own fault, but it's understandable since one doesn't expect such a large markup.
The question is, since we live in a land of capitalism and the cell phone market has tremendous competition, why hasn't the price of SMS messaging dropped? For that matter, why hasn't the price of mini-bar food dropped?
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Of course!!
I think the other way around is verrry strange
Imagine someone with too much money hates your guts,
they can let you pay a couple of thousands bucks
just by sending you a insane amount messages?
"The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they make a vacuum cleaner."
Nope, you have to pay for receiving calls too, although you have the option to not answer if you don't recognize the incoming number, although that's not as much an option with SMS. (or any of the horrible bastardizations)
From what I understand, this is quite backward from how the rest of the world does things. Land lines do have free incoming calls, but this is not the case with cellphones (mobiles)
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
From what I understand, the problem is that the cost of SMS messaging adds up faster than you realize. Imagine you have a friend that works nearby and you want to ask them if they want to have lunch together:
Now, if that was a normal voice call, that conversation will take all of 10-15 seconds. Even on a mobile/cell phone, that's still pretty cheap. But with SMS that's 8 messages, probably more with negotiating the place and time. Add in even more messages if more people or groups have to be organized. Now, here in Australia an SMS on most networks will cost the same as a call connection fee, something like 20-25 cents IIRC (I don't have one myself). So the previous conversation can quickly ramp up to a few dollars. Imagine having similar SMS conversations several times a day for a whole month and the figures of even a few hundred dollars start sounding very believable.
I think it's mostly due to historical reasons. Before there were cellular phones, there was a mobile phone service that used VHF FM radio. The mobile phone subscriber paid the airtime charges on all calls, no matter who originated the call. It was an expensive service, so why should the wireline caller get stuck with the bill? The mobile phone subscriber had a normal telephone number. Instead of terminating at a telephone set, it terminated at a two-way radio base station. A radio operator at the base station would complete the call to the mobile subscriber and fill out a billing chit for the call.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I am currently in the market to switch cell phone providers. I am a person who will go over the terms and conditions with a fine tooth comb.
On Cingular's brochure, it had details about the text messaging service. Without a plan, each message SENT OR RECEIVED would cost $.10. You could turn off text messaging, but Cingular would be unable to guarantee that you would not receive any incoming messages.
Huh? I would turn it off, saying I do not want any, and Cingular would still charge me ten cents if they were unable to block an incoming message? How in the hell?
Text messaging seems cool to me, but the outrageous prices here in the U.S. make it unreasonable. Make it $2 for unlimited and I would be interested.
[Note: I tried to find the same paragraph on Cingular's site but they say to the see the appropriate brochure for terms and conditions of featured services like text messaging.]
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
It's not just the US. Here in Canada it's the same. My carrier once decided to give me a 'free' trial of the service (no subscription fee, still pay to receive). I found out I was getting it when I got two spam text-messages. Then I got charged for receiving the text messages I didn't want. That was why I hadn't ordered the service in the first place.
It's in the carriers interest to have you use the service if they get to charge you the fees for receiving the messages.
I've never been happy with a model where someone I don't know or want to communicate with gets to cost me money. That's like collect calls from telemarketers.
Shh. They're listening and might think that's a good idea.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
X:"Hey free for lunch? I'm out at 12:00, and i was thinking of going to Wherever"
Y:"well, maybe at 12:30. may we just go to OtherPlace instead?"
X gives a one tone ring to acknowledge.
there, two messages. wow, that was hard!!!
Tmobile has the same deal. Until last August, you could even get unlimited *international* text messaging for $10/month. As someone with lots of friends in the UK who like to text message, that was great. Oh well, they still offer unlimited domestic text messaging for $10/month.