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"

Comments

Answers

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Ridiculous pricing

[Mike Schiraldi]

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?