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The True Cost of SMS Messages
nilbog writes "What's the actual cost of sending SMS messages? This article does the math and concludes that, for example, sending an amount of data that would cost $1 from your ISP would cost over $61 million if you were to send it over SMS. Why has the cost of bandwidth, infrastructure, and technology in general plummeted while the price of SMS messages have risen so egregiously? How can carriers continue to justify the high cost of their apparent super-premium data transmission?"
Next up on Slashdot: Why do cars cost so much?
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
They can justify the cost because we continue to reward them with lots of our dollars.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Because it's what the market is ready to pay for. If nobody wanted to pay that much for SMS service, you can be sure they would lower its price.
Jean-Francois Im's blog
SMS is the byproduct of the GSM standard. It was never designed to actually be a customer product. It was more or less thought to be some stderr of sort.
When SMS was introduced at the beginning of the 90ies in Europe, it was basicly free. There were SMS gateways all over the Internet. But then the carriers were recognizing the marketing potential of SMS, and slowly the prices per single message were rising until they reached 49 ct (in Germany at the end of the 90ies). Only when parents were stunned by the SMS cost of their children, protests started to mount, and then the diverse regulation offices in the different countries were trying to limit SMS prices, so there were actual plans which included for example 1000 short messages per month.
SMS is a prime example for the difference between price and cost of a product. The cost is nearly zero, but the pricing is expensive.
cos telecom companies are a bunch of robbing bastards, and people are stupid enough to keep paying.
For a long long time now a single text message has been priced at the same level (or thereabouts) as a 1 minute phone call, cosnidering the data in a text is off in less than a second as opposed to the 60 seconds of data in the equivalent phone call...
What we want to pay is what the price will be, end of story... On a sidenote: everyone with a cellphone should get together and ban the use of SMS untill the carriers lowered prices to at least 1/10. But that's never gonna happen. I wonder what SMS/MMS will cost in 10 years? :-)
Just use
T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net
Virgin Mobile: phonenumber@vmobl.com
Cingular: phonenumber@cingularme.com
Sprint: phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Verizon: phonenumber@vtext.com
Nextel: phonenumber@messaging.nextel.com
Just buy the cheapest data-plan and it's still better if you're a heavy user.
reeeeeediculous
Uh... what part of "supply and demand" did you not understand?
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
They've invested a crazy amount of money in technologies customer's don't care for (3G, all the different ways to get the Web on phones), so now they have to charge a lot for the two things people actually use (SMS and ringtones).
SMS = Serious Money, Suckers.
SMS = Sixty Million per Syllable
SMS = Send Mail, Son
SMS = Sans Mon Sens
SMS = Sizable Monetary Subtraction
SMS = a literal phrase which if sent through it's namesake would bankrupt Donald Trump
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
It's a market economy with lots of morons as customers. As long as they find enough morons to pay their super-inflated prices, they don't have to justify anything. And if they don't find them, they just have to justify why they're not making profit in front of their shareholders.
I've quit sending text messages years ago.
> How can carriers continue to justify the high cost of their apparent super-premium data transmission?
Because people keep paying them the fee they ask for the service. Price competition has occurred for general cell phone service, because everyone who buys in, uses it. The majority of the users probably don't use SMS and don't really care about it; those that do, either don't have a grasp on how much money they're spending or don't care.
Bottom line: when people stop using the service because it's too expensive or start changing carriers for lower SMS transmission prices, you'll get price competition.
Cellular air links don't have "net neutrality". The pricing for voice, web browsing, SMS, video, and non-Web data connections is totally different. That's what it's like without net neutrality.
I'm shocked at the price of SMS messages in the US.
Here in South Africa a typical SMS costs at most R0,80 (About US$0,10) and no network charge for incoming SMS messages. (I can just see how spamming someone with e-mail / web originating SMS messages can drive their phone bill to insane amount with no control over it) You can even get SMS prices as low as R0,25 (~US$0,04) if you go for a bundle.
Having to pay to send and receive SMS.
Imagine if the postal service did that: I have to pay to mail you a letter, and then you have to pay to receive it. Better yet, you have no choice but to receive it and the postal service will bill you for it. Imagine all that spam you get in your mailbox costing 10c each. This is how SMS is charged on most US carriers.
With the ludicrous fees associated with SMS (dollars per byte), if I pay several cents for a 160 character message it ought to get delivered without charges on the other end (including that persons bundled SMS "allowance").
How can Microsoft justify the high-cost of vista premium when all you get is a DVD that cost less than $0.25 to produce?
How can phone companies charge more for international telephone calls than they do for international data transmission, like Skype, which transmits the same audio?
How can Apple justify factory macbook upgrades which cost more than doing the same upgrades yourself?
How can air lines and train companies justify changing ticket prices for the same service closer to departure, when the cost of providing the service remains the same?
How can Intel make a bunch of Core 2 chips then justify charging a premium for the ones that remain stable at higher clock rates, when both fast and slow chips cost the same amount to make?
The answer is: The companies can charge what they like for products, the cost of production doesn't have to factor into the price at all. Companies like to maximise profits, therefore they set their prices at a point where they will make the most profit - which usually means high enough to make a good profit per item, but low enough not to drive customers to competitors.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
People pay for something for its value, not its cost.
So how much did it cost Da Vinci to paint Mona Lisa ? A canvas + an easel + a model + brushes + paint.So what justifies the millions And the carriers dont need to justify anything.If you dont see any value in SMS given the prices, use alternate methods. email/fax whatever. That people are willing to pay is the very reason they are paying.
Pay anything for instant gratification. :-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
"Next up on Slashdot: Why do cars cost so much?"
I'm still waiting for the reason why sex costs so much?
This little workaround is exactly why Apple is preventing 3rd-party apps on the iPhone. They're undoubtedly under a strict contract with AT&T not to allow anything on the iPhone that circumvents AT&T's profit centers. That would be VOIP and an SMS app that did all the sending via email. Hey, I've had my iPhone for 2 weeks and I love the crap out of it. I'm just a slight bit frustrated by this compromise. Wish it were a full-on computing platform.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Idiots. I remember somebody saying there was a "sucker born every minute". Some people just have no clue what they are spending when they cannot see a price tag or look someone in the face when that person asks them 1$. They just don't think about the big picture, what their bill is at the end of the month, and what they are getting for their money. I have a mentally challenged friend, which I love to death. I take care of him as much as I can. I actually pay some of his bills for him. He cannot handle the money. He can do basic math and figure out that the drink costs 2.50$, and he can pay for it and makes sure he gets the right change. He CANNOT figure out how many drinks he can afford on his paycheck. I don't want to sound condescending, but I am not sure most of the people getting stuck with high SMS charges are that much smarter than he is.
I always knew SMS was a scam. 160 characters per message and I was getting 25 gratis? WTF? Were they communicating these messages with 300 baud modems over phone lines? I was instantly aware there was an extreme difference in the actual overhead of sending the message and the price point being set for the market. I did not understand the technology that much, but nobody could make me believe the cost of broadcasting a small message was that high. They do OTA programming all the time. The signal cannot take that much of the bandwidth on the cell tower. It would have to be equivalent to a 1 second conversation maximum, and since it is more like a UDP packet than a TCP packet, there would be less communications "overhead" to send it. Maybe I am wrong, I don't know if a cellphone sends an ACK type packet when it receives an SMS. Anyways, the technical aspect of it could not make me believe it cost that much.
What made it far far worse as well was that early on, some systems like Exchange Server would use SMS as part of their delivery system. Try getting nailed for an SMS message for every 15 minutes for the whole day. Wheeeee. The SMS cost alone made enterprise email exchange on smartphones or pda phones cost prohibitive. Hence part of the real reason why that technology has moved to Direct Push and uses the WAP gateways instead. The other reason, IMO, is that Direct Push does not depend if your on the phone or not. You spend 30 minutes on your phone without it and email/contact/task synchronization stops during that time period.
Please DON'T get me started on SMS messages that cost the person 1$ just to send them. American Idol? Deal or No Deal? Mofo Puhleeeze. The sheeples wonder why they are being charged 45$ at the end of the month in just extra charges.
So that's what it really boils down too, sheer idiocy on the part of a lot of consumers... and many of them tend to be of the younger "hipper" generation that coincidentally does not pay their bills.
In any case, its all over now. Verizon has started offering unlimited texting plans with all types of messages included, not just SMS. Included gratis in just about any voice plan. Recently switched 6 lines over to it and saved 30$ doing it. So if Verizon is doing it, and they are the WORST at plans, then everybody else must be doing it already.
Admittedly, I can only see the summary because the site has been Slashdotted, but it seems to imply that $61m of SMSes cost about $1 to actually deliver.
Given that people in the UK send, in total, about 50 billion SMS per year, and pay approximately 12 cents per message (we'll forget the freebies, let's go really conservative to see how silly the summary of the article is), for about a total market of $6bn. So, if $61m of charged SMSes cost $1 to deliver.. $6bn / $61m = $98. So.. the cost, to the providers, of delivering 50 billion text messages in the United Kingdom is $98? I'm not buying it.
1. The public are ignorant of the true costs.
2. The Telcos (like many other corporations) are thieving bastards.
Funny thing is, most of the public still wouldn't do anything about this even if they knew. They accept the bills that they get and the roaming costs and the data costs - irrespective of how much they are actually worth.
I wish someone would explain to me why roaming data (browsing internet while overseas) costs an extortionate amount more than when browsing it locally (especially when you are being served by the same damned carrier Vodafone in both countries). Do they bill for each individual router hop?!
-- "To ask a question is to show ignorance; Not to ask a question means you'll remain ignorant."
It does not change the fact that it is still a force (and one that uses "tyranny of the majority" at that) that has a "null" attack surface (no real place to attack unless you don't mind taking on the majority). That's where the humanity of it stops, and the imperfections have become justifications for normally inhumane actions(just because the "minority" is perceived as "silver spoon elitist", "Marxist", "undeserving", and/or "thuggish" if they present an objection).
I doubt that's covered in any of that (over quoted) person's works in that respect.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
has to be a shoe in for the most retarded comparison of the year?
yes teleco's are gouging us on everything not just sms, hence why i only have a prepaid mobile i hardly use and my home phone is VOIP. my annual telephone bill/internet/mobile expenses are under $1200.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
IIRC it had cost about a million Euro (most of which was the price of SW) and just sits there, generating a revenue of roughly a million Euro per day. Maintenance costs: almost zero. Network load: almost zero, because messages are transmitted only in pauses between calls. Modulo New Year, nationwide televoting or football world cup, of course, where the assumption of a few messages between a few calls is no longer valid.
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
People are still using SMS, even though in many cases, actually calling by phone would be cheaper and more convenient. I'm not talking about the "I'll arrive at 11:20" message, I'm talking about the actual SMS "chats" that lots of young people engage in. 10, 20 SMS go back and forth easily. Maybe I'm getting old, but I simply don't understand why they don't simply call each other. It'd be faster and cheaper.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Why the hell was the parent moderated "troll"? Are there phone-company lackeys disguised as libertarians here?
I just found out that AT&T (A-fee&fee?) is raising their text message pricing. When I first signed up for AT&T 6 or so years ago it cost 10 cents to send an SMS message, and it was free to receive them.
When AT&T switched to Cingular the price of sending a message dropped to 5 cents, but they started charging for incoming texts - also 5 cents. Assuming you send a message for every message you receive, this works out at about the same price as before.
AT&T came back online and phased out the CIngular brand name, and prices were again changed. This time to 15 cents each way.
More changes have taken place that I can't quite remember. At one point text messages were 10 cents either way, and at another point they even included MMS (multimedia messages) at the same price as SMS.
As of March SMS messages on AT&T will cost 20 cents and MMS will cost 30 cents - both to send a receive.
So let's do some math here, and figure out how much this simple transmission is actually costing us.
A standard SMS message contains up to 140 bytes (1120 bits) of data - this takes care of the 160 characters allowed in your text message. This might not make sense at first, until you realize that SMS uses 7 - not 8 - bit characters - leaving you with 128 possible character values instead of the normal 256. So 1120bits/7bits = 160 characters.
So our total message length is about a tenth of a kilobyte (.13671875 Kbytes). In terms that the iPod generation would understand - if you had an iPod with a tenth of a kilobyte you could fit 1/4000th of a song on it. I assume here and for the rest of this article that 1 song = 4 Megabytes.
If you divide 140 (the total number of bytes available to you) by 20 (the cost per message), you find that you are paying 1 cent for every 7 bytes of data. This leaves you with a cost of $1,497.97 for the 1024Kbytes contained in a single megabyte. iPod users: It would cost you $5,991.88 to transfer - not even to buy - a single song via SMS.
By comparison, I pay $50 a month for a soft bandwidth limit of 500 gigabytes through a local ISP. That comes out to 512,000 megabytes or 10,240 megabytes to the dollar. This allows me to transfer 2,560 songs for the same price as a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger off the value menu at Wendy's: $1. I will use this my standard measurement for the rest of this article.
So far I can make the following statements concerning the costs of bandwidth:
Cost to transfer 2560 songs:
From my ISP: $1
Via SMS messaging: $15,339,212.80
But wait, there's more!
When calculating SMS charges, most people don't take into consideration that the message is really being paid for twice! If I send a message to another AT&T user, I am paying to send it AND they're paying to receive it! This should probably be illegal, but that's for another discussion.
So how much does an SMS message actually cost? Not 20 cents - but 40 cents! This doubles all of my numbers above.
Furthermore, my above figures estimate that people actually use all 160 characters available to them. Say people on average actually only used half of that (which is still being generous) - then their price of data has again doubled from the numbers I gave above!
Making adjustments for both of the above statements, we realize that our above number isn't even close to correct! Corrected, the comparison looks more like this:
COSTS OF TRANSFERING 2,560 MP3s:
via my ISP: $1
via SMS: $61,356,851.20
Phew! THAT is premium data! It's no wonder that SMS texting alone is a 100 Billion dollar a year 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.
Let's even go more premium - how much would it cost to hand deliver data?
The U.S. Postal service is currently cha
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
You've got it right there.
The reason that the real cost is actually quite high is the fact that the GSM air interface is miniscule compared to the demands of the all the people using the system in each cell.
If an SMS were free, the air interface would get clogged up.
So it's quite sensible to economize the use of the interface using price to depress demand.
From memory (from my work with Detecon/D-1 in Bonn, Germany) in 1991/92, the SMS data goes over something called an SDCCH channel, which uses 1/8 of the bandwidth of a normal 13 kbit/sec voice channel (or half-rate 6.5 kbit/sec). The SDCCH channel is devoted to one user for a few seconds during the transaction. Potentially you can have 64 SDCCH channels open on a single physical frequency (using TDMA) at one time. But there are also bottlenecks in the signalling system (control channels).
Additionally you require the whole infrastructure for storing and delivering the SMSes. Store-and-forward has complexities that connection-oriented traffic does not.
Why has the cost of bandwidth, infrastructure, and technology in general plummeted while the price of SMS messages have risen so egregiously? How can carriers continue to justify the high cost of their apparent super-premium data transmission?
It's called price fixing, basically a spoken or unspoken shared monopoly. Same reason they sell virtually costless mp3's for 99 cents, or gasoline for $3/gallon when just a few short years ago it was half that price:
1. Join in a secret agreement to sodomize the plebs
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
And that's like saying that just becausee it's ones and zeros you should be able to run Intel code on PowerPCs. Video, voice, and other data have different requirements they have to meet to ensure customer satisfaction. Your argument is an example of simplifying too much and ignoring others.
I know the true cost of SMS messages!
I made a paper for the univeristy some years ago. The marginal cost of a SMS is 0.
They do have a little cost/opportunity. As a matter of fact SMS messages are sent on the control channel. Initially SMS were implemented in the GSM standard as a control system, just like the ICMP protocol of the IP stack. Then NOKIA though to implement a actual instant message function using SMS. The Contol channel is the channel that your mobile listens to in order to receive calls. So for receiving a SMS a control signal is sent. Since bandwidht is somehow limited on these channels it could happen that in a situation of massive usage of texting the control channel gets saturated and normal voice protocol initiation is disrupted. To prevent this carriers nowadays apply a kind of QoS delaying SMSs until there is no risk of congestion. So we can state that the marginal cost is 0 and the cost/opportunity is also 0
Another story is for the MMSs. Their cost/opportunity is even lower since they run almost enterely on GPRS thus using most bandwidht on normal data channels. Thus a MMS with pictures sounds and maybe video SHOULD cost less than a SMS.
So you wonder, why do I pay so much for a SMS or a MMS or even a Call: after the debts for the initial hardware infrastructure have been paid by the carrier you are still paying because of market segmentation (You won't change the carrier on the fly) and a little monopoly (Almost impossible to start a new carrier from 0).
I hope ou liked the summary!
- Also, the author takes an average of 80 characters for the cost of SMS and compares them with the max number of words/characters you can send via US mail. An unfair comparison.
All in all, all fallacies skew the numbers towards the point that the author is trying to make, which is quite unethical. It is also stupid because a fair comparison would totally support his point, just with slightly less astounding numbers.The article promises to tell us about the "true cost of SMS" but never actually does this.
Cellular networks are very different than the data networks. One big difference is that while our data networks are connectionless, the focus of cellular networks is on connections. Operators must balance the use of SMS messages with the normal call traffic. Perhaps SMS use is disrupting normal call traffic and the operators are using the free market to curb SMS volume?
Modern cellular protocols are reducing the connection-centricity of the networks and the price of text messages will likely come down, but at that point the messages will probably be run over 3G instead of the SMS mechanism.
When I was in Japan, I got my first mobile phone. SMS messages were always free. Free to send, free to receive. If I were sending messages to a phone on the same service as myself, I could send larger messages (250 characters, I think). On other services, I was limited to 80 characters or so. Still, free free free, and if I needed to say more, I could send two messages, or compose a longer e-mail (but the e-mail wasn't free). This was on that $9/month plan.
That's still how I think of SMS messaging.
But then I returned to America. 15 cents a message? 15 cents for each RECEIVED message? I don't have any control over that! It's BULLSHIT.
Don't put advice in your sig.
Try comparing the cost if you want to send not more data than 3 SMSs per month.
>>How can carriers continue to justify the high cost of their apparent super-premium data transmission?
Simple. Teenage girls who don't ever see the cell phone bill.
Why do so many people seem to have to phone someone just to shout "Hi. I'm on the train...yes the train ....now Its leaving the station.... bye".
And then on the intercity trips there is always someone next to you that obviously uses his phone for business but has that really loud ringtone of Abba singing "Waterloo". He always puts his phone back in his pocket after each call and then takes 20 seconds to get it out again when he's called two minutes later.
Market driver is one thing, but you have to also take into account the cost of providing per event billing for SMSes. Sending even a kilobyte (while SMS is roughly 160 bytes) of data over ISP link just adds to total volume used this month. But in case of SMS it must be recorded who, when, to whom, etc. and then usually presented on the bill (be it paper or electronic). In the mean time you have to store it somewhere and process it through billing systems. Not to mention enhance the billing interface capacity of SMSC handling the traffic.
-- "In theory, theory is the same as practice, but not in practice."
What ever this guy is getting at?
:P
:)
Why does he have to blow up the figure to downloading 2560 mp3s?
Rather he should get it to sending a 160 Character message via all the services he has mentioned.
That will in fact give a better rating of what is happening
Although it is a good piece of calculations, it shows he has way too much time on his hands.
I even suggest he does this reverse calculation
BTW, it costs me 0.0025402$ to send a text message here in India and None to receive.
It is so sweet a thing to have such cheap facilities.
My Blog | Badsh
Let's face it. Internet wou never, ever become so popular and omnipresent if there wouldn't be advance efforts by NSFNET, EUNET, UUNET and hundreds if not thousends bigger and smaller commercial ISPs that WERE NOT telcos. Telcos charging schemes always went for maximising immediate profit and never really understood the possibility that shere size of the market can bring whole new services, opportunities and, yes, more money. Telcos in fact DID HAVE global data network even in days "before WWW" (pre-1993). And, boy, was it expensive to use. So if we compare cost of one SMS, we could as well compare it to the price telcos were charging for 1 KB of data transferred over global (X.25) network. (In fact, using global X.25 network is still a bit expensive, albeit safe..). To put it simply, telcos cannot raise price for the Internet access, even if they would like, because existing competition still prevents that. On the other hand, SMS are very lucrative and existing price models and charging scheme prevent bigger competition in that sector (price scissors).
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Pay for incoming anything? WTF?
Imagine I get a phone with unlimited/very cheap SMS plan. Maybe even a throw-away prepaid. And I start sending my SMS in bulk to a person I don't like. Ouch.
In Europe, all 'incoming' are free, with exception of roaming which only suckers (and people with money to burn) use. Others just buy a local throw-away pre-paid in their destination country - international rates are far lower than roaming.
Here we get a pre-paid plan like: buy starter for $10, use up the $10 within a month, receive calls/sms for another 11 months. Anytime, for another $10 you get another $10 worth of outgoing calls/SMS and prolonging the incoming calls/sms for another year since the recharge. It's great if you want to drive embedded devices by GSM, if you want to stay in contact with your kid without risk of paying arm and leg for the bills, and you can always call the emergency number 112 for free.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Your point on the data channel is valid, but the "expensive" store-and-forward architecture is not.
Compare it to traditional email: hundreds of companies offer store-and-forward services, with *gigabytes* of data retained for *months* for free or orders of magnitudes more for prices below 5 EUR or USD per month.
It is true that SMS calls have an unusually high impact on a phone cell and therefore needs to have a marginal cost high enough to keep supply and demand in check at the very least and at max the price the market will bear.
Well yeah, but voice has tighter restrictions on it to meet customer expectations. Text doesn't have the latency or bandwidth requirements that voice does so what is the difference that makes it more expensive?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
The refusal of ISPs to move to an un-metered revenue model is the force which is strangling mobile software development. Where would the Internet be today if ISP payment models remained as they were in the early 1990's? In actual fact it's worse, at least those ISPs charged per minute and not per byte. It currently costs around £2 via most UK ISPs to download 1mb of data.
With this in mind, who do you suppose is hindering the role out of municipal Wi-Max?
Metering data thru mobile telco's isn't just shameless profiteering, it is foolishly crippling the development of the mobile internet market.
The major carriers clearly have a gentleman's agreement to keep prices high. Why would anyone want to rain on the parade by charging a fair rate?
The way I see it, a single second of voice is equivalent to about 10,000 SMS messages, so I'm doing them a favor by using SMS instead of voice. Naturally, they charge me out the ass for it.
Kinda like PC banking in the 90's.
expandfairuse.org
Do you have a phone that does an automatic time/Date update every once in a while to keep accurate time? How come the carriers don't charge you for *that* service as well? I mean considering the following -- when a time/date update is performed, the phone has to establish an over-the-air connection, send and recieve data, and close a connection -- essentially, the exact same process as an SMS, with about as much data transmitted and revcieved.
But you're not charged for it, know why? Because your phone bill would be $1000 per month and people would burn down the telcos with torches and pitchforks!
SMS should cost the same, since it's built into the GSM network, but it doesn't because it's become tradition (yes, that's all it is) to charge for messages sent. And now that they can also also double-dip and charge for messages recieved, it's become a nice little gold mine, a license to print money.
But now the telcos are getting greedy and in the good old game they all play of nickel and diming their customers to death (have you EVER tried to read your Verizon bill?), it's only going to be a matter of time before we're calling our Congressmen to make SMS pricing regulated.
(It's a sad state that I pine for the days when Ma Bell was Ma Bell...)
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
In India, we don't pay for receiving SMS. The cost of sending SMS is very cheap. Carriers make money, not with SMS alone, but what they call as Value Added Services (VAS). Many people subscribe to get daily horoscopes, cricket alerts etc., which is really the cash cow for carriers. Yes, we do get spams, but also get valuable community messages, like asking us to take our kids to get free polio drops etc.
In Indonesia, people use text messages since they're much cheaper than calling. A single message could cost you Rp250~350 ($0.03) compared to a phone call which could cost Rp1000/min. (US$1 ~= Rp9000)
it depends on the price too, not just habit.
Because here in Slovenia it costs 0.02 euro to send an SMS and, coincidentally, it also costs 0.02 euro to talk for a minute. Sure, the SMS might be cheaper for the provider, but often the SMS is more convenient for the user (say, talking to your girlfriend while in class without disrupting anyone)
...
Or maybe that's just the one provider and the other is being extortionate as hell
If it was free there would be as much spam in your phone as there is in your in-box.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
You should ask Kwame. He's learning the true price of text messages. =)
http://www.abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=4196564
"also they advertise through sms"
That's great isn't it? It costs money to receive spam. If the cost of sending SMS is lowered, I'll start receiving more SMS spam.
Today I receive an occasional spam message via SMS, probably because it's so expensive. If they lower the price to 1 cent, I'm sure I'll start receiving thousands of such messages every day, rendering mobile phones as useless as e-mail has already become, and bankrupting me in the process through the fee for receiving the messages.
If it were up to me, SMS would cost nothing to receive, and $100,00 to send.
Customer: Okay, so I sent my msg, how do I pay for it?
Provider: Bend over please.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
My guess is that you are in the USA. In other geographical areas (ex: Europe) you can tell which operator the number 'belongs' to, by looking at the first digits. Number ranges are assigned to operators in a way that makes them easy to recognize.
The best you can get when switching operators, is the same number, but a different prefix, ex: xxNNNNNNNN -> yyNNNNNNNN
The saddest poem
When you compare apples and oranges you get ludicruous results. Let's turn the comparison upside down. Using the math in TFA, I can send an SMS with 80 characters for 40 cents, so that's $0.005 / byte for SMS.
On the ISP side of the equation, let's suppose I go on vacation for most of the month in a billing cycle, and only send a single 80 character email. That email costs me $50.00, which is $0.625 / byte for the ISP.
Based on this math, the ISP is 125 times more expensive than SMS. How dare they!
I just checked my family plan with Sprint (though I doubt it's different from a individual plan) where I know my wife text messaged me yesterday (she sent, I received and replied). On her phone it shows one text message used (not two if the receipt of my response were to count). Mine account shows 18 messages used (I have no data plan, so these are 10c apiece), but I know I've received more messages within the last month and that 18 reflects only the ones I've sent.
I don't know where people get the notion that Sprint charges for incoming text messages because they don't. They also don't charge you for minutes spent listening to voicemail or charge you roaming charges at all inside the U.S.
Say what you will about Sprint being one of the big bad telcos (and they are), but they certainly are doing a good job of steering clear from all the other crap the Verizon and AT&T do to their customers which keeps me locked into Sprint out of sheer audacity that a phone company would do such things to their customers and expect them to stay.
I'm also waiting to see what Sprint/Nextel have to offer in the way of Android-enabled phones this year. Believe me, if Sprint started pulling the stunts Verizon and AT&T are pulling, then I would go without a cell phone.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
"There's a sucker born every minute."
Sorry, but that's a much more accurate reason than "It's all about what the market will bear".
I know for a fact that it costs about two or three cents -- I'm talking about euros here -- for a server to send a text message. Still, most operators will make you pay around 0.15 euros for an SMS (I have friends who pay as low as 0.09 euros though).
The thing is, most people rely too much on this technology already to ask the operators to lower their prices. Besides, there are already plans that give you huge advantages for text messages price-wise: for example, I don't pay for any SMS that I send as long as the person whom I'm sending it to is using the same operator as well. Now I don't have many friends who have subscribed with Orange, but that's another problem.
"The body may heal, but the mind is not always so resilient." -- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
"Why has the cost of bandwidth, infrastructure, and technology in general plummeted while the price of SMS messages have risen so egregiously? How can carriers continue to justify the high cost of their apparent super-premium data transmission?"
Because people pay for it...by the millions (both numbers of people and total amount of cash). Where's the incentive to reduce the cost to the customer?
The real reason the price for single text messages has skyrocketed is because the carriers don't want you paying per-message. They want to drive you into getting a monthly bundle of X messages for Y dollars. Maybe you'll save money, maybe you won't, they don't care. What they care about is a steady income.
Having people paying for five messages one month, then fifty the next, then ten the next is lousy for their bookkeeping. They don't like the unreliability. But if you're giving them $10 every month instead, their accountants are able to sleep at night.
No, I'm New Here
Can you post your paper or tell us where we can read it?
I have never understood the allure of txting.
Even if you are a txt happy teenager, txting is slower than talking. It is slower, it is more distracting, it costs more, it conveys less information... so why again would you txt someone instead of call them / leave a voicemail?
Has never ever made sense to me.
He told me (and he didn't tell me it's a trade secret) that the entire SMS messaging in their network was handled by one single Sun workstation. IIRC it had cost about a million Euro (most of which was the price of SW) and just sits there, generating a revenue of roughly a million Euro per day. Maintenance costs: almost zero. Network load: almost zero, because messages are transmitted only in pauses between calls.
I don't know if your buddy had the full picture. That may be the case inside the building, in terms of the processing, but over the air text messages are carried on the same high-priority channel used for call initiation. That channel is highly trafficked. At least that's the case in the US - SMS is NOT carried in pauses in call traffic. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's the case for GSM as well, which (if I understand correctly) is the standard in Europe. So I think there's a very high chance your friend is simply wrong.
Here's an interesting article on the phenomenon:
http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsid=4525
The article is from 2005, and with all the kiddies using text I have to imagine that they've upgraded that resource to handle the capacity. As such, I can't imagine today that terrorists could create a greater flood than a horde of 12 year old girls. But the point is still basically the same - the control channel is very high-priced real estate. So yes, data rates for traffic on that channel are far higher than standard data.
It's kind of like asking why air mail costs more than ground. You pay more for high priority traffic.
What does SMS mean?
Fata viam invenient.
Ok, there are servers, licenses, development costs, and infrastructure. Not just installing new cell towers but also maintaining the current towers, providing the data links for sending calls and text messages to other carriers, etc. Then, there is the fact that a single tower can only handle so many users making calls and sending text messages. You know, the limitations of wireless bandwidth. Then there is the cost of people: operators, technicians, testers, programmers, support personnel, etc.
It may cost two cents to send a text message across the network, but how much does it cost to keep the network up, in place, and growing to support demand for new products and services as well as demand from new customers.
Or would you prefer to pay two cents a message and only be be able to send thirty characters text messages to people on the same network as yourself?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
diculous [dik-yuh-luhs] adjective
causing or worthy of dicule or respect; reasonable; sensible; serious: a diculous plan.
I don't know why everyone acts so surprised.
In that case, we should ban passengers too... because they're rather likely to be more distracting in terms of conversation. When a driver is engaged in conversation with a passenger, he (or she, don't PC me) will turn to glance at the passenger, which won't happen when using a handsfree. Thus, not only is the driver engaged in conversation, but he'll also be looking away from the road periodically.
So, the only "logical" choice in this age of legislation by prohibition, is to prohibit having passengers... or mandate opaque soundproof walls between the driver and the passenger.
Congratulations, we really HAVE reached that point.
What happened to personal responsibility?
Talked to AT&T yesterday about adding an SMS plan to my account.
The rep said they are increasing the "pay as you go" SMS rate from 15c to 20c in March.
Yikes.
From Reading this article. Guess I need to switch from SMS message to Email messages for all the server notifications.
Sounds like accountants are lazy bastards.
Tell them they need to hire us programmers at 10cents/5seconds, or 15cents/160characters of source code so we
can help devise a accounting system to keep track of this. If marketing cant improve network usage, that their fault.
What they really want is predictable reveneue per customer so they can report it on the stock market updates.
I have an idea, remove all plans, make all sms's 2c ea, and voice 10c/min. Thats easy maths. Oh and also give prepaid people a 10% discount, because
its money up front. Simple billing/simple marketing, build it and they will come.
Look at petrol, its the same price no matter what its usage. I can buy 20cents worth for the same per drop price as 40 gallons.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
First, I want to agree that I think SMS service costs too much, and I think being charged for receiving a message is ridiculous...
But one of the main costs is transaction cost. I worked at a large internet ad delivery company back in the day and we had an anecdote describing what we were trying to do with our business. This is from a few years ago, so just take the numbers as approximate:
Take the stock exchanges. They have millions of transactions a day and they try to keep the transaction cost down below $5 per transaction. Hence the $5 transaction fees, etc. Before Etrade and others, $5 wasn't even an option, but they brought the efficiencies of that market down below $5 so that they could actually make money there. Now take the telecom industry. They have tens of millions of transactions a day and they try and keep the costs down to $0.10 per transaction, hence the 'connection fee', 'rounding up' for calls less than a minute, etc. In the ad serving and reporting industry, our goal was to process billions of transactions a day at a cost of less than $0.0001 per transaction.
Obviously there are different requirements involved at each level of transaction cost, so that was a little bit of an aside I guess. I think there was a credit card transaction one in there at around $1 too, but the point is that there are real costs involved in per transaction tracking and reporting, and historically they have been accounted and processed in a particular way by the telecom industry. For more reasonable pricing, the telecom industry would need to develop new methods to do this, probably taking from the ideas that the ad serving industry has been using for years now.
But this may be also one of their excuses for charging for receiving a message, because they are required by statute to provide a certain level of tracking/paperwork/etc. for each transaction, and while one company (sending the sms from their customer)may have streamlined their reporting, another (the receiving customer's provider) may not, so since there is no standard transaction fee, they charge whatever they need to/can get away with.
I'm not saying this isn't twisted logic, just that this may be part of the equation.
http://blog.slaingod.com
You never know how many hidden words are in a conversation like that.
Translation: "Honey, I know you've been seeing somebody, but I don't want to know about it. Please get him out of our bed---MY BED---before I get home."
I once had a signature.
Congress passed an act in the 1990's as part of a pact with the big telecommunications companies to improve their infastructure in return for big tax breaks and loosening regulation on rates and fees. The idea was that the US was falling behind Europe and Asia with regards to the internet.
The telecoms took the money and didn't do the work to the tune of over $200 billion in tax breaks and they are still screwing over the public on SMS traffic rates.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
I work with some satellite based systems that cost less than the SMS rates AT&T is apparently charging. For example:
Iridium (yes, they are still around): $1.50/minute (prices vary). This buys you a 1200 bps link (they claim 2400 bps, but your actual throughput is closer to 1200). This means to send a megabyte of data would cost you (1048576 / 1200 / 60 * 1.5 == $21.85). According to the article a megabyte of SMS would cost you $1,497.97. Iridium was generally considered to be grossly expensive when it came out.
Now lets compare against a real (even more expensive) satellite connection. Inmarsat BGAN charges by the megabyte, a common plan is $7 for each modem/satellite hop, so in the worst case scenario you're sending modem to modem for $14/meg.
I read the internet for the articles.
Well, maybe they should use the same technology my cable company does to keep bandwidth usage down.
Any user that tries to send more than 1 SMS message per minute gets an RST packet back instead of transmitting the message!
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
I know this is a strange idea, but bear with me. Maybe someone could invent a device that would take the text that you type, and employ some sort of encoding to it. That encoding transforms it into a cheaper voice signal, sent to the person's voice mail. After all, voice mail is free and there's usually no airtime charges. At the receiving end, we would have the reverse: the phone would decode the inexpensive voice signals from the voice mail messages into text. It would take those decoded text messages and put them into your SMS Inbox on the phone. We could even call the encoding and decoding "modulation" and "demodulation". Now, if someone would just come up with a snappy named for such a modulator/demodulator, we could start building these devices into the phones. Where's the innovation?
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
The operator has to invest in at least One SMSC per region. This is at a cost of several million dollars. It is a very limited market where the main vendor is like Logica. It is usually a high powered cluster of machines running a major database like Oracle (which is not cheap), and the 24x7x365 support for the machines is a pretty penny as well. This requires several links to the Home Location Register. Receiving an SMS is inexpensive as the page is sent over usually the Main Broadcast Control Channel which is usually combined with the Cell Broadcast Functionality at least in GSM/GPRS/EDGE. SMS has a lot of layers and is quite processing intensive even though it is supposedly transparent to the 3G UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA networks. SMS over Packet service is definitely the way to go, but a lot of operators already have the infrastructure for SMS over Circuit and have not upgraded as of yet. MMS is also expensive as well as it is quite a sizable message and this is how some operators have implemented their push to talk mechanism.
Text messages are sent in the overhead: even if they didn't implement text messages at all they'd still be building all that infrastructure for voice. In fact that's what they DID build it for. SMS is a side effect, piggybacked on other traffic: it doesn't cut into bandwidth for voice at all.
The marginal cost for text messages is 0.
Turning that around, if they were just setting up a text message service, they would need fewer and simpler cells because they wouldn't be trying to send nearly as much data over the airwaves. Ten seconds of talking requires as much bandwidth as hundreds of messages, and because voice conversation is real-time they have to send it synchronously and even a second's latency is noticable. A text-only network could delay a minute waiting for a slot to open to send a message and most people wouldn't notice most of the time.
Based on TOTAL cost recovery, as you suggest, text messages should at most be something like 1/10,000th the cost per minute of voice. Not 2 cents (that's gotta be a wild-assed guess), or even 0.2 cents: the phone company would still be making a hell of a profit off them at that rate.
Here in Finland I pay 4 (euro)cents per SMS sent. No charge for receiving. Last year EU started investigating whether cap roaming costs for SMSs. If this goes through (like it did with roaming costs for calls), it should lower country-to-country SMS costs too.
I'm one of the few who takes pity on others with their obnoxious ringtones. I wear a BT headset, and have my ringtone come through the earpiece.
Most providers offer unlimited text messaging. Mine's $4 a month or so. My friends and I text more than talk. In a work environment it's a lot less obtrusive to look at my phone when I have a chance and type a quick message back.
I can't believe the false logic used. First off he only counts his ISP costs for getting a message, but he counts both sending and receiving a message for SMS. You can immediately cut the number in half because if you're receiving a message over your internet connection then someone else must be sending it and paying their own ISP fees.
Next he incredibly doubles the number yet again because he claims people only use 1/2 the available 160 characters in a text message. The major problem here is that his original number is based on the full available bandwidth of his internet connection. That's 500 gigabytes per month. With 2.6 million seconds per month that is 193k per second or about 1.54 megabits. Used every second of every day for a whole 30 days. If you use that much bandwidth you are getting a killer deal.
So let's say he wants to send a text message using his ISP to another computer. First you need a protocol, you don't just pump 80 bytes out your internet connection and hope those bytes end up where you want them to go. That's IP where you give the message an address. Next you need to verify that tour message is getting through to a destination. That's TCP/IP. Each of these is 20 bytes, so that's 40 bytes of overhead even if you're sending just a single character. Wait though, the TCP protocol sends and receives packets simply to establish a connection (your phone must find the service and use radio bandwidth for that also), so there's mroe wasted bytes. Now you must use the SMTP protocol on top of that to send the message to the server so that it can be guaranteed delivery. Then the recipient needs to use some protocol (POP3/IMAP) to retrieve the message. So not only is he forgetting to count data off his internet connection, he doesn't count the free data that gets send with an SMS such as the source and destination numbers.
My point is that the article is moronic. Text messaging isn't for transferring large amounts of data. There is limited bandwidth in the radio spectrum for providers to operate. A lot happens behind the scenes to make sure your message is delivered. Not only that, but each message has to be tracked by billing software so the customer can be charged.
Perhaps the most glaring error in this indefeasible article is that he lies about the cost. He claims it's 20 cents per sms at AT&T. Check out their plans yourself. You can get unlimited messaging for $20 per month. 1500 messages for $15 means one cent per message.
I'd like to propose a scenario... Some kid uses their internet connection for email only and texts 5,000 messages a month (not unheard of). Then for $20 he got 5,000 messages so that was $0.004 (less than 1/2 a penny) per message. Now he pays $50 a month for his internet connection where he gets 1,000 emails a month. That's $0.05 per email. Now the internet connection costs more than 10 times as much as sms.
I work in the mobile industry, and am very familiar with how SMS works. There are two big reasons why cell phone companies can charge as much as they do for SMS communications.
1.) Carriers don't typically send SMS communications to any kind of universal network. They often use an intermediary, called an aggregator, to bridge the various carrier networks. When I send an SMS from my Verizon phone to a user with an AT&T phone, the SMS data (the SMPP packet) is typically first sent to an aggregator (such as Verisign (formally mQube) or mBlox. This aggregator often does a bit of work on the packet to make it more compatible with the target network. Most carriers take advantage of a feature of the SMPP protocol called TLVs, which are essentially arbitrary name/value pairs. Carriers don't usually settle on any conventions for these TLVS, so they often must be translated. It then places this packet in a queue of sorts to be transmitted to the target network, in this case AT&T's. In exchange for this service, the aggregator typically charges the carrier(s) a little money. While this charge isn't usually on a per-message basis (unless it's a PSMS), it still factors in. These steps get more complex for binary SMS (MMS), WAP pushes, etc. While some cross-carrier communications is direct (such as Verizon to Sprint), in most cases this middle man plays an important role. Carriers simply pass on this cost to their users.
2.) Because they can. It's harder/more work to change carriers than it is to change ISPs. They have a pretty captive audience, and the 2 cents, 10 cents, 25 cents, or whatever their charging is what the market will bare.
I didn't RTFA, or 99% of other posts, following common /. practice, so I might be repeating someone. Way back in the day when I bought my first cel phone, it came with SMS, and there wasn't any charge for it. I could send as many as I wanted, and it wouldn't appear on my bill. There wasn't even a section on my bill for it.
So yeah, I know that the capability has been there for years.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
You can send text messages for free by using AIM. Just send the IM to the phone number (add +1 to the beginning for US numbers, don't know if this works in other countries).
Or, rather, observing the degree of influence telcos have on regulators and legislators, Adam Smith would be likely to point out (from An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter 11, Conclusion of the Chapter):
Why don't these SDCCH channels clog up from voice traffic? On my plan I can call same-network numbers for free. These calls MUST use at least as much traffic as an SMS message - probably more (sure - 99.9% of the data is on a different channel - but even 0.1% of a voice call is a lot more bandwidth than an SMS). And yet all those "free" phone calls don't kill the network.
Sure, the true marginal cost isn't quite zero, but it is probably way less than a cent...
Have you ever heard a passenger exclaim "Watch out!!!" while in the car with you? Probably. Ever heard them say that over the phone? Probably not.
*That* is why passenger conversations are less distracting than cell phone conversations.
& it tot me 2 ryt nething in fewer wrds
And by your logic we might as well drink and drive too.
Quack, quack.
This is a relevant article in relation to this one. http://consumerist.com/349527/get-out-of-att-without-etf-thanks-to-text-message-rate-increase
It tells about how to ditch ATT now that they are raising prices on text messages.
You bring up a good point. The cell phone providers have to track and bill every sms message (sometimes twice). This process probably costs more then sending the message itself. The solution. Make all plans costs 1 cent more per month and stop charging for SMS messages all together!
You give other people your opinion without having to listen to theirs.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
...about the fact that only persons under 20 bother with SMS. He mentioned that during surveillance SMS is mission critical for him and his crew. Whoda thunk? It's also necessary so that midway during the very first screening of a movie the kids can spread the word if it sucks. And broadcast the locations where cops have sobriety checkpoints or radar enforcement.
...Lorenzo / I'm into kinky crustaceans. I just discovered internet praWn.
While you're correct to point out that mobile bandwidth is indeed more expensive than fixed-wire bandwidth, I don't think your comparison is fair, either.
For example-- my cell phone plan includes unlimited data transfer, although the max rate is quite a bit lower than the 12Mbps my cable modem will manage. But SMS messages are specifically excluded, even though they are almost exactly the same thing as the rest of the data I send without paying extra. This results in the hilarious result that I can use instant messaging clients for free, but pay extra to do the same thing (with a length limit) via SMS. And more amusing than that is that watching streaming video is included, while a tenth of a kilobyte of text costs $0.20.
I can pull gigabytes and gigabytes through the cell phone network. But this one weird standard has an artificially inflated cost associated with it for no reason beyond "it makes us a lot of money to do this."
(Although truth be told, voice traffic is the same deal. Why do I have a montly cap on voice, when I can watch youtube 24/7 for free?)
Here in the U.S., I spend $32/month for unlimited SMS and MMS, unlimited web browsing, and 500 prime-time voice minutes. It's CDMA and EVDO, not GSM, through Sprint's not-well-publicized SERO plan.
Alright all you iPhone users, stop reading now cause this can't help you.
In the states Sprint is a pretty good choice for this. They have an unlimited texting option that costs an extra 5 or 10 a month, so if doing that calculation on Sprint, it'd be a lot different. That's the only reason I can justify texting, that and the fact that it (when used properly) is a nearly silent method of communicating, which is awesome when working a concert and something goes wrong!
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
My SMS is included, I pay about $27/mo or so for 500 minutes on Sprint with unlimited SMS, unlimited internet, first incoming minute free, nights at 7pm and weekends free...I think people are just too lazy to investigate good deals...
It's all about what the market will bear.
I thought we believed in free, competitive markets, and that we believed that their magic is such they drive towards lean efficiency which results in more cost effective goods and services for everyone.
What's that?
Oh.
Tweet, tweet.
The way you do the math is kinda subjective. The author picked the worst case prices for SMS messages.
I mean unlimited internet access *and* text messaging cost me $15/month or so total on my sidekick. So, saying that sending the same ammount of data via txt messages as via TCP/IP in that case is just arguing that TCP/IP is faster than SMS.
Likewise, in a hotel I stayed at in Las Vegas, wireless internet access costs $1/minute! Unlimited SMS messages in the same location cost less than $15/month (see above). So, for SMS to be more expensive, you would have to conclude that the data you could transfer in 15 minutes of TCP/IP communications takes more than a month to send via SMS.
Anyway, my point is that the math is subjective...
Randy.Flood@RHCE2B.COM
...sending an amount of data that would cost $1 from your ISP would cost over $61 million if you were to send it over SMS.
Think how poor you'd be if you were sending the message while driving a car running on printer ink.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
I don't know about you, but I use SMS people when I need it. I don't even give a second thought to the cost. And neither do most teens, from what little I see of them.
I am fully looking for an economical collapse because of all the greedy sons of bitches in high places. Think about it. Everything is going up, so why not pay more for text messaging? That seems to at least be the thoughts of the corporations. Everything is going up except our pay. To hell with the phones and SMS messaging, we all need to go back to the old way of life and let the greedy bastards lose some money and hopefully sleep too. Ignorance is bliss, so why am I not happy?????
Hi,
I am in India and I can say that most of Asia is crazy about SMSes. It's all the rage here and we have tons of services available through it, not to mention the millions of SMSes which are sent everyday.
All contests on TV or services on the internet are through SMS. It's one of the largest revenue earners for the mobile industry and advertisers.
Receiving an SMS is completely free here. I can receive one from my neighbour or from a guy living in the US, UK, etc. It doesn't matter. Its free. Being charged 20 cents to receive an SMS is a concept which is totally alien to the average Indian. So what does it cost to send an SMS? 0.25 cents. Thats not 0.25 dollars. Its CENTS.
I am in New Delhi and my provider is Airtel. I pay a minimal amount of Rs. 30 per month (75 cents) for me to receive a special price of Rs. 0.10 per sms sent. That works out to 0.25 cents per sms. So if I send 4 SMSes, it costs me 1 cent.
Btw, its also Rs. 0.50/min (1.25 Cents/min) for me if I want to make a call.
Man, am I glad to be living in India!
For French people not familiar with English (shame on them ! ;)), I made a quick French translation of this great article: http://www.warpdesign.fr/by_myself/2008/01/29/cout-dun-sms/