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OMG Did U C What U R Paying 4 Texting?
theodp writes "If you thought gas prices were rising too quickly, writes CNET's Marguerite Reardon, check out what's been happening to text messaging. Since 2005, rates to send and receive text messages on all four major carrier networks have doubled from 10 cents to 20 cents per message. If the same pricing was applied on a per-byte basis to a single MP3 song download, it would set you back almost $24,000 according to one estimate. So why are carriers gouging their customers so? Because they can, concludes Reardon."
I was recently reading about the whole George Vaccaro fiasco and did some calculations on how much the cost of transfer is over a T1 line vs. what companies like Verizon charge for data transfer. Its astonishing that people put up with this:
Why do people put up with this? Some people might say I'm comparing apples to oranges, but Apples dont' cost 17,000 times more than oranges. There should be a class action suit over this.
The 40,687,488,000 should actually be 517,602.528.0 I made a mistake the first time I did this and corrected the prices, but didn't correct the rest of the comment. The rest of it is right.
Most people who are serious about texting have unlimited plans, at least in the U.S. I'm not sure how much they cost but say $5/month on top of your regular contract, even 100 text messages is 5 cents a piece.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
another option would be to pay the 10-15 dollar flat fee for unlimited texting that most providers have. I know that is what we use here at work because of the high volume of SMS messages generated by monitoring software.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
A professor at my university was recently asked by a British TV program to calculate the cost of retrieving data from the HST, and it came out quite a lot cheaper than sending text messages.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Maybe these prices will help drive the American consumer away from their opulent sport utility text messages to something a little more environmentally sustainable.
You'd think one of the wireless carriers would be able to differentiate themselves in the market and make a killing off selling 10 cent text messages. (That is, people would change to their service when possible because they're half the price of anyone else, and 10 cents for a text message is still a huge profit.) Do I just not understand the market dynamics, or could this be a case of price fixing?
In India the cost of texting is as little as 80paisa. i.e 0.80 INR. Now calculate the difference and make your new calculations on it.. Why do you guys spend so much then. Sue the companies that charge you so much for something which costs next to nothing.
517,602,528. There must be something infectious about Verizon and getting your decimal points in the wrong place.
and solve this issue. Caution: Unlimited texting may decrease your social skills and will cause everyone around you to want to smash your phone!
I just emailed Sprint asking for free text messaging and got it. I have done this for about 10 extra things on my account for free. I have 500 free text messages a month and never used half
In the UK, the Telecom Regulator OFCOM recently (as in a few days ago) started pushing our mobile operators to reduce the cost of sending and receiving text messages while abroad, where the price was often around 30p (60c!) or more just to send one.
I hope this sets a precedent and they start to clamp down on the cost of sending regular, local messages as well.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Pretty much the same as gas...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
to download an mp3 ... if the RIAA smells you.
And often, to impress on my clients (who are the ones paying the VAN fees, etc.) how very expensive it is, all I have to do is say one thing:
The only thing more expensive in the world per byte than text messages are VAN fees
Though, according to these figures, I may have to reverse the saying now!
The so called free market isn't free.
If customers had any idea about the true cost of things to the companies that they purchase from, they wouldn't buy at the prices that things are being sold at.
Free markets require perfect knowledge. And without that, the invisible hand doesn't work.
Oh yeah, like in the US you have to pay to receive messages? Would you put up with having to pay to receive emails or take all phone calls? Fuck no.
Meh, this is a random ol' rant.
(Oh yeah, to the fuckers who say "communism", I'm an anarchist. Check my "homepage" for info about that. Oh yeah, and no I don't get anything for the referral link, and if it really bothers you, you can remove it.)
I wank in the shower.
Er, no dear, this limit is imposed by the GSM standards, it's not something the carriers have any choice over.
So, this this fundamental error in the article, how to believe any of the rest of it?
So why are carriers gouging their customers so? Because they can.
"Why do you rob banks?" a famous depression-era bank robber was asked. "That's where the money is" he replied.
Does anybody really think that any company at all is going to charge any less fro any product than they can get away from? Personally I refuse to text at all; I pay a dime for the text as well as air time. If I'm in a situation I can't or don't want to answer the phone, I'll call the caller back. Text messaging may have its legitimate uses, but I think it's probably mostly used by kids.
We're getting unlimited access plans for cell phones lately, maybe it's because the kids are growing up and getting jobs and realising that money only grows on trees if you have an orchard?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
In Norway, NOK0.59 is a pretty average price to pay, which corresponds to about $0.012 using todays rates. Furthermore, many companies give you 100+ free messages per month. With my own usage pattern, I keep my cellphone for free (No monthly charge, 120 mins of calling and 90 sms for free per month). Stiff competition does wonders :) If companies in Norway can do this, I'm sure it would be possible in the states too, as long as the consumers keep up the pressure.
Furthermore, get off my lawn!
Given that these messages use the infrastructure messages that are used to keep track of which cell the phone is in it effectively costs them nothing (other than the cost of billing the message).
If the same pricing was applied on a per-byte basis to a single MP3 song download, it would set you back almost $24,000 according to one estimate.
Looks like we're not downloading MP3's from the same place... Even if my price goes up 2000%, I will still pay exactly $0.00 for my MP3's.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You don't have kids (teenagers). Texting is a lot less stressful than talking with them and makes you look hip. Ok, not "hip" because that would make you sound old.
Con'tulations, on not texting and on inventing your own contraction. I wish 6 billion people worldwide could say the same thing. What a horrible technology.
Whale
Fact is that it completely falls into the category of "charge what the public will bear". I think that was why the call it a "Free Market Economy" because someone provides the service, and you pay for the service until the point where the value isn't there anymore and begin to drop away from the service. Then they reduce prices to bring you back, and magically everyone finds this "happy medium" thing... Enough with the basic economy stuff though.
Now you also know why I cringe every time I get a spam message on my phone, and the carriers won't refund the charge because their system is open to hacking and spamming. The who mess just sucks.
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
I was being generous. You also have to account for cell towers not being right next to COs and so you get charged for channel miles. A T1 that is 15 miles from the CO might be in the thousands of dollars. But its been a while since I've had to look this up.
I'm 45, used pc's since 1977 and have never text'd, and never will.
this is about mobile phones. i used to send 20-30 texts a day but rather make a 5 min call now cuse it is cheaper and less effort ( typing is an EFFORT i will finish it now :D )
Goods and services in a free market are generally offered at a price somewhere between what they cost to produce and how much they're worth to the consumer. In which direction it leans more is a good indicator of the competitiveness of the market in question. I.e., if you have a limited number of suppliers and the price is near the costs, they're in heavily competition, which is usually good for the consumer. If the price is near what the typical consumer is willing to spend, the suppliers are engaging in (usually tacit) collusion, if not acting as an explicit cartel.
I've never done this myself, but I've heard that these sorts of increases are a good way to get out of a 2 year contract early, which is only fair, since they totally are trying to change the contract on us to charge us more than we originally agreed to.
Price is the intersection of supply and demand curves. The US carriers charge what they do because people are willing to pay those prices. If you don't like the pricing, don't text. If enough people vote the same way with their fingers, prices will drop.
My father's 64, I'm 37, and he and I text each other several times per day. Just because you're an adult, doesn't mean you have to be a Luddite.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
to download an mp3 ... if the RIAA smells you.
I've always wondered that about dogs, too - how can anything that stinks that bad smell anything at all?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I have SMS disabled on my phone at the carrier level. The only SMSs I can receive are administrative which are free. No one can send me a mesg and I can't send out. I did that after my previous carrier (which got bought by AT&T) started charging for incoming messages. I asked why they did that and they said because everyone else was charging for incoming too. And of course then it went from 10 cents to 20. I don't need SMS so the charges don't hurt me because I don't have any.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
I'm 24 and I made Verizon disable text messaging on my phone. Conversations that take 10 minutes of texting can be had in 30 seconds with more detail. Too many important aspects of communication are impossible to translate into words. Just not worth my time.
I wonder what the feasability is of getting two mobile phones, each with unlimited text accounts, hook one up to your home PC and the other to your laptop. Now for the tricky part; write custom software that would enable you to use the text messaging system as a communication system between the two computers.
So with such a setup you can do rudimentary webbrowsing (without images) / emailing etc., your laptop sends an url via the mobile to the mobile at your home, which the PC there picks up, retrieves the webpage & sends it back in txt message "packets" and your laptop retreives and combines back into a web page, with all the txt messages encrypted so the carriers can't directly snoop on your browsing/emails.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
To put it bluntly, your mobile communications' market isn't free. The companies serving that market don't feel the need to compete with each other in any way perhaps besides area coverage. Their clients' business is always a given as they are unable take it elsewhere (no alternatives) and are happily shelving away more and more money to get the exact same service.
So, if they have a captive audience and there is no other actor in the stage, what else forces them to put on whatever show they wish?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Telcos can charge you 4-10-30-50 cents for a text message that costs them hundredths, thousandths of a cent to carry because they monopolize the network. If your phone could login to any radio network to which it can eletromagnetically connect, depending on which services and prices it provides, then the networks would compete for those connections.
Instead, you're locked in. If you want to switch in realtime, you have to pay prohibitive "roaming" fees that are arbitrary and extremely high - higher than even the ripoffs from the primary network. Switching your primary network requires "porting" your phone number, days or weeks of bureacratic "processing", and sometimes can't port, and breaks your old primary network's contract at great expense.
These constraints are all made-up for telcos to retain their old monopoly status with their existing customers. The exact same truths that forced open the wired networks are still true for the wireless networks, but the telcos have lobbied to make that much more expandable market into an "exception".
Note that this problem is more true in the US than in Europe and elsewhere. Foreign countries don't have as much contractual monopoly, but do have some residual technical fragmentation that is more of a basis for lockin, even though there's somewhat less lockin. But since their formerly more separate states (AKA "countries") had separate telcos that compete with each other, there's still some effort to keep whatever lockin they can, though there's less of it.
The US Congress should fix the laws to apply "universal access" to the radio networks as well as to the wired networks (including the Internet). Make these lockin contracts illegal, so they become the exception (merely to purchase rates even lower than the open market produces after competition, to pass along to consumers the savings telcos get from lower "churn" rates). We're a loooong way away from that kind of Congressional alliance with consumers instead of telcos. But we can get there, just as we got there with landlines after many years of fighting.
We just have to start by making the problem of telco monopoly privilege the conventional wisdom. 300M Americans whining about paying too much with no choice usually eventually has an effect.
--
make install -not war
Thank god no one texts me duplicate Slashdot stories!
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Er, no dear, this limit is imposed by the GSM standards, it's not something the carriers have any choice over.
Don't the 2.5G standards have a protocol for longer messages?
It's actually worse, at least on AT&T -- they charge both sender and receiver. It cost me $10 to add the 200/mo feature for my wife and I on a "family" plan. There's a word for that sort of robbery. But then there's also a word for fools like me who pay them. :-/
.nosig
My verizon contract is up this month, forget renewing. Forget it all, I'm going 50$ a month wifi card, EEEPC and Skype. They can keep their minutes.
This is a scam by the cellcos. They are in collusion with the text spammers. None of the big four US cellcos will allow the consumer to opt out of or turn off text messaging. One to five unsolicited text messages that the consumer is forced to pay for per month rakes in a very healthy windfall for the carriers. Since January, I have shelled out about two dollars for spam. It was pay or have my service canceled and then be screwed for the early termination fee.
Now kids remember "Deregulation will result in more competition and lower prices for the consumer"
I love it when an industry that is inherently non-competitive due to the fact that the spectrum is limited and the only way to make money in telecommunications is through economies of scale. The only guys who make money in telecom are the big guys and they make it buy making us pay and controlling parts of the spectrum. This is why it is licensed, the "tubes" are only so big and you can't add more.
It is just like the media ownership rules. Buy loosening the rules, consumers don't benefit but the bottom line gets bigger for the big guys. Government used to understand that because these companies are caretakers of our EM spectrum, they are allowed to make money and have monopolies (or close to it) but they must follow certain rules like justifying price increases with fact.
OK, rant over. Proceed with texting while driving.
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
You poor saps in the US are apparently even willing to pay to receive text messages! So unless you often talk to yourself, double the price quoted per text sent to get a more realistic figure.
To people in Europe a system like the one in the US would be totally ridiculous. I don't have a plan for my phone at all, and I have a few hundred free texts per month, with no cost to send or receive them to anywhere in the world.
The potential for abuse alone should be enough to damn the practise - if I know your number and you can receive texts, there's literally nothing stopping me from sending you 50 dollars worth of costs to you at no cost to myself. I could even schedule it to be done automatically for god's sake!
This is the sympton.
Stupidity is the disease.
The American operators will kill the SMS market and the value added services business (and the related premium rates).
This is maybe the right time for the USA to give a closer look to the European business model.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Telecom carriers in the US are really ripping people off.
Here in India, it is Rs. 1 per SMS with most telecom carriers. That works out to about 2.4 cents per SMS.
But there are plans which are even cheaper.
Example from Airtel (www.airtel.in), you have the following add-ons that you can opt for with your telecom plan:
250 Local SMS at Rs 25/month
400 Local+National SMS at Rs 49/month
999 Local+National SMS at Rs 99/month
Also, incoming calls as well as SMS is free unless you are on a roaming plan (that is, you are out of town but you want to remain reachable over the same phone number on your mobile).
To hell with being a luddite, texting just seems to be a backward step to me.
We invented the telegraph, then the phone, and now its like going back to the telegraph.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
shurely, "wot U R paying 4 txtng"?
literally LOL'd at that...
~ Ron Fitzgerald
I'm 24 and I made Verizon disable text messaging on my phone. Conversations that take 10 minutes of texting can be had in 30 seconds with more detail. Too many important aspects of communication are impossible to translate into words. Just not worth my time.
In the spirit of the article title: UR DOING IT WRONG!!!
Conversations over text? Maybe back and forth once...but not whole conversations, not in general.
This same type of response was given in another recent thread that discussed text messaging. Stop trying to devalue something just because you cannot come up with an effective way to use it.
Text messages are most effective for short bursts of information. That should be obvious. And if you insist on finding a conversational use for them (there are some), they let you have those when you are somewhere that talking on the phone would be frowned upon.
There see, I just gave you two ways to use it that don't fit into your complaint. You're welcome. You're 24 and you already qualify for 'get off my damn lawn!'...how closed minded will you be in another 24 years?
The pricing of datacom and telecom services has not had anything to do with the cost of the service since the original AT&T monopoly was broken. Pricing is determined by the market, not by the cost of providing the service. This is because most of the cost is fixed, while the revenue is highly usage-dependent.
From the carrier perspective, the only thing that matters is revenue. The new product (whatever it is this year) will always be marketed at premium price. The old products are priced to maximize revenue. If they can gain revenue by lowering the price and selling more units at that lower price, they do. If they can gain revenue by increasing price and selling fewer units, they do that.
Voice minutes have become cheaper over time largely because of competition. SMS messages are currently fashionable, and so carry a premium price. As soon as text messaging starts losing fashion appeal, some carrier will start selling it for lower pricing, or even giving it away, to get subscription revenue. Abusing the customers with ludicrous per-message pricing will make that day come sooner rather than later.
In NZ, we have only Telecom and Vodafone for choice. They each have a 2000 txt addon/plan, and I think they both have a 500 txt plan.
The 2000 txt plan is for $10/month on their pre-pay plans -- 0.005 cent per txt, to any cellphone on your own service provider (telecom to telecom, vodafone to vodafone).
Their 500 txt plan -- also $10 [0.02c per txt] is to any network -- vf to tc, vf to vf, tc to vf, tc to tc, etc.
I believe that the 500 txt plan on vodafone is only available to post-paid plans, but the txt2000 addon for SuperPrePay is, clearly for pre-pay.
Also, but almost sounding like free advertising for vodafone, they have $6/month for unlimited txt/voice (and maybe photo messaging) to any ONE person "Best Mates" addon for SuperPrePay.
"Because they can, concludes Reardon."
And why can they? Because there is no Free market in operation here huh? But if someone suggests that their pricing should be regulated, they will spout about letting the market sort things out...
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
...it's what the kids and other people that don't understand money do. It's easy for the phone companies to gouge this section of society while also catering for the general population by giving them a few text's included in their monthly package.
I'll bet if you look at the economics of it they would break down like this:
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Actually, what annoys me more is that I have to pay to receive text messages (at least in the USA). I'm fine* with the wireless carries charging what the market can bear for sending messages, but I feel that text messaging should operate similarly to long distance - the initiator (caller/sender) pays the fee.
* Not really. I think the pricing ridiculous, but can't really fault them for charging what people will pay.
Texting prices in .dk: ~5 cents and falling. Yay free market economy! The US should try it one day.
Why are you even using simple texting? With today's cell technology, there is no reason for you to be using simple text messages (except maybe to older cell phones) With all the unlimited internet access plans, its called IM, or hell e-mail.
It's a normal contraction for him, he's from the Elizabethan era.
Hey reply'rs (another invented contraction!)
I forgot to mark the previous msg !
But really, even email gets tedious when trying to get stuff done, after a few emails back and forth with a client, I just pick up the phone and hash it out. So much faster, easier and clearer. I usually follow up with an concise email for our records.
I've gotten test messages from CEO's that unreadable and have to call them to find out what the hell they want.
I can see in countries outside Canada & US where phone calls are much more expensive, but when I pay a flat rate for my office phone and low rates for cell usage (and skype for everything else), I have no need to use the telegram technology (oops, I mean texting) for modern communication.
Oh ya, I talk to my Dad (and other people I care about)
PS: If you notice this: "from the stop-texting-me-dammit dept." in the story header, then I think my original comment isn't off topic!
Texting is not an extravagance. It actually is probably good for phone companies, since the data in a text message is minuscule compared to that of even a 30 second phone conversation. It's like if at a fast food joint you order a combo that comes with a soda, and when went to the soda fountain, you had to put in an extra dollar to get plain water.
Current text messaging rates don't make sense. Period.
You started the economics discussion, so here comes ECON 102.
There are only a small number of wireless carriers. Therefore an oligopoly exists. The demand curve for oligopolies is "kinked." This means above a certain point customers will rapidly stop buying, but below this point buyers will not start purchasing in drastically greater numbers. This means that the oligopoly will set a price point right at the kink in the graph.
What does this mean?
1) A section of the populace feels txts are necessary, and demand is inelastic. This is the lower half of the demand curve. This means a change in price does affect demand significantly.
2) An increase in population of that subset of people changes the demand curve, and moves the kink in the graph higher on the price axis. A price increase ensues. The oligopolies charge exactly the price they can get away with because market dominance allows them all to effectively charge the same prices easily. One carrier changes, the rest change to follow.
3) To stop this pattern, you don't have users reduce demand, you have to break the oligopoly, because lack of competition means that prices don't follow standard supply and demand.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
You want a free phone with your plan - you have to put up with absurd telecom margins. You don't - too bad, you'll have to pay up anyway to subsidize those who do. In Europe many cell networks don't offer phones at all, so the prices are lower, even though the operating costs are higher.
On a related note, this is why in the US people think iPhone is the best thing since sliced bread - they don't have a chance to see a Nokia or Motorola phone to compare.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Damn right they can. If people are willing to pay a price, to send text messages who's to say that price is too high? If you don't like the price, don't buy the product or service. How fricken easy is that? The last time I checked no one has ever died from not having text messaging capabilities. So the choice should be real easy.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
No, in this case the price is NOT the "intersection of supply and demand curves". It has nothing to do with supply at all, in fact. Too see this, imagine that their bandwidth costs got cut in half. The supply has increased, so you would expect the price to drop. But the price would not drop because they have discovered that people will pay the increased prices. It's simply collusion and price-fixing.
It's supply and demand. Hopefully all the teeny-boppers will find something else that's "cool" to drive prices up on so that those of us that use text message for legitimate reasons don't get gouged on sending/receiving them anymore.
Hmm, Slashdot got rid of my cranky on and off tags!
Go capitalism! We don't need no commies telling corporations they can't charge 17,253 times more for transferring bytes over a cellular network than a T1 line! That's what people will pay, that's the beauty of the free market, that's what previous generations have fought long and hard for. Those bytes that cost 1/8th of a cent each (20c w/ text messages containing up to 160 bytes each, since you commies are mathematically challenged) are what keep our country free and prosperous! If you want the government to keep the telecoms from charging 17,253 times more then go move to some communist country, and good luck smuggling a cell phone in there, or finding a telecom company for that matter.
God bless America.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This topic has been hit a few times already in the past few months. The only thing that makes this article differ is it mentions a comparison to rising gas prices. Besides this, the cost of transferring an mp3 over sms is a stupid comparison because it's a messaging protocol, not a data transfer protocol. It's like comparing the cost of gas per gallon to the cost of chocolate syrup per gallon, it's apples to oranges. If you want to do a comparison, why not cost of kb, since that's what wireless carriers charge by, beyond unlimited plans.
For Verizon, you can block TXTs sent via email and the web. After doing this, I haven't received any spam. To do this, go to www.vtext.com and login with your verizon account.
Then, under Preferences > Text Blocking, select the options to block all messages sent via the web and email. Since my friends all text me from their phones, this is not a problem.
I see this math done all the time with all the OMG! responses.
The answer is simple: Write IM clients that run on your phone. The carriers can then charge whatever they please for SMS, people will just stop using it.
Next problem?
I hate printers.
I'm really surprised that more people haven't worked this out.
I have unlimited Internet, so I just log in to Google Talk and anyone can message me that way.
For messaging with the spouse, I use BlackBerry Messenger, because it's reliable and works even if she forgets to log in.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
That's not insightful at all. Just about anyone who's ever used text messaging can tell you that you get charged for incoming texts. We do need a class action suit over this.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
That's what I did. $30.00 a month for unlimited text and picture messages to any network for all 5 lines with AT&T. That comes out to $6 per line. Not bad if you ask me.
please add the greed tagging
A message that is sent also needs to be received. So all the network traffic is double. Once to send, once to receive. And the radio network overhead is much more than just those 160 bytes in the message.
And then you have all the infrastructure necessary to handle the messages. It's not point-to-point, it's store and forward. A network operator needs to invest quite a bit of money in the systems that handle the text messages, with all their interesting features, the billing, etc.
Of course texting is still ridiculously expensive, I'm not going to argue that. But using baseless numbers and ignoring the behind-the-scenes infrastructure to "prove" a 17000x markup on text messages is nothing short of moronic. And so is saying that texting is equivalent to paying $24000 for an MP3.
...the notion that carriers are pushing consumers to texting/messaging plans?
AT&T's smallest messaging package is 5 USD for 200 messages ~ .025 USD per message.
IMHO the reason the per message fee is so high is to drive consumers to purchase the messaging plan.
Why haven't we discussed this issue and the issues related to paying for 500 messages, only using 250 messages and then not getting reimbursed or rollover messages?
When you get unsolicited junk text messages that you have to pay for and the junk text senders don't have to pay anything - they send it to you over the internet. The wireless companies don't care because they're making $$$.
Yeah, I know you can turn off your text messaging now with most providers and maybe some (I haven't looked in a month) can offer black lists or even white lists(?). But why is it, as the consumer, I have to go through all these hoops in order NOT to be charged for shit I don't want?!?
Being anti-texting is not the same thing as being a luddite. Texting is backwards technology that is only popular because angsty teens lack enough social skills to actually talk to another human. A secondary validation of texting's existence is that some countries I've lived in, such as the UK, (they say) it is actually CHEAPER to text than use your voice minutes. In the States, that is a non-issue since I get more voice minutes than I can ever use for a reasonable flat-fee.
Does it seem ridiculous to anyone else that you can't send multi-party text messages? instead you have to send each party individually. The phones that support multi recipient actually do the 1 to 1 messaging on your behalf. You're right, texting is more like telegraph than email or IM.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
Yeah, if you could fit a telegraph in your pocket and use it inconspicuously when you're in a social situation in which it would be either rude or inconvenient to take/make a phone call.
Why use a few minutes of talk time to convey messages that are not urgent or are simple enough to express in char[160]?
You know you're spending too much time on the net when you're supposed to laugh and instead you just say "lol" in one of various degrees of emphasis.
Onda Technology Institute
Thanks - it's just water and brown.
no, he's a Jaffa.
Onda Technology Institute
If you wanted to get really technical, doesn't it actually cost the mobile phone company ZERO dollars to send/receive text messages. Aren't texts transmitted within the Mobile Application Part of SS7 which exists in every single packet sent to/from your phone for things like roaming information, call routing, etc. By putting a text message in this protocol and sending it to your phone, it does not cost a cent more than not sending it, does it not?
To give someone an address, email, or other detail specific information. If you say it, they must hear it well, remember it and write it down. If you text it, they have it exactly as you wrote it. No danger of mishearing, forgetting or losing what they wrote it on.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
What is the writer trying to illustrate? it is not even an apples to oranges comparison. More like apples to spare tires comparison.
My 8-year-old daughter's free* phone on a new phone number came with over 1000 spammy and raunchy text messages. They wanted to charge us over $100 for the messages. I called Sprint the instant I opened the box.
At first, she tried to say that we were on the hook for it but then I explained that we had just received the phone and I had just opened the box (direct from Sprint). I told her that we didn't want text messages (especially if some randomly-dialing computer can cause you to be charged hundreds of dollars before you even notice). Recently after we changed plans, I noticed that I got a text message again. I called them up and told them that text messages were supposed to be off on all our phones. They took it off again and I haven't had one since.
It's really not too much of a problem on Sprint. Just tell them you don't want them and they disable it.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Products are priced based on what people will pay for them, not what it costs to manufacture them.
Welcome to the market.
I was also getting tired of paying $.15 to receive and $.15 to send. I have probably sent a total of 6 text messages in over three years. But then I found an actual use for keeping it.
My wife and I both have our cell phones with area codes near where a significant disaster struck last year. We no longer live in that area (we moved 1,000 miles from that area 3 years ago) though we opted to keep our cell numbers where they were. When said disaster happened, I was unable to call my wife, because our calls were routed through that area.
In desperation, I found that text messages still went through fine. Of course neither of us were personally affected, I still wanted her to know so she could check on her relatives in a timely manner. I expect that the messages went through because they use so much less bandwidth than a phone call, though I'm not 100% sure. I somehow doubt it had anything to do with the $.15 per message charge, though.
So I found once in three years that I had a use for text messaging. And just in case I should encounter another situation where the mobile networks are overloaded and I need to get through, I'll keep text messaging around for that.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Oh sure, it's backwards technology that's allowing deaf people to communicate with each other or with their hearing counterparts. We must be antisocial.
Just got a letter from Bell (Canadian wireless carrier) alerting me that "Due to increased costs" all text messages have now been raised from 20cents to 25cents per message. Really?? A large monopolistic carrier, which charges ridiculous fees for data and the, so called, "system access" fee, needs to charge more for text messages? 25% more?
It seems that Canadian carriers are all to happy to follow US price increases, just not price decreases.
talk to a lawyer. Someone has to be that guy that rights it, why not you?
I don't ahve a cell phone, so I don't ahve cause to bring this to the courts.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's the only way my friends' teenagers talk to her. One of them decided to run away from home, and immediately texted her mother to tell her where she was. Jom texts her back: 'C U L8R. BTW ur room makes GR8 office 4 me. Love, Mom.' I thought this was so hilarious.
In Romania: 7 cents or 5 eurocents for a SMS.... 15 cents to give a one minute call, the other doesn't pay anything to receive calls (and it seems very normal this way).
Or you can get a 8euro (~12$)/ month plan with 100-200 minutes on the same network free and nights/weekends cheap calls.
Conversations over text? Maybe back and forth once...but not whole conversations, not in general.
Just because I don't text myself doesn't mean I don't know how people tend to use it. In my experience texting is rarely a "back and forth once" exchange.
This same type of response was given in another recent thread that discussed text messaging. Stop trying to devalue something just because you cannot come up with an effective way to use it.
Umm, no, that's exactly the reason I devalue it. What if I said the opposite to you? Don't try to value something just because you've come up with an effective way to use it. That just doesn't make sense. Effectiveness is subjective. You might find short bursts of information an effective form of communication, but I don't. I either want to discuss what you want to tell me, I already know, I will find out soon enough, or I don't care.
Text messages are most effective for short bursts of information. That should be obvious. And if you insist on finding a conversational use for them (there are some), they let you have those when you are somewhere that talking on the phone would be frowned upon.
This is a terrible argument, and it seems to be the most frequent. There are very few conversations that cannot wait until you are not somewhere that talking on the phone would be frowned upon. If it's urgent, people call back immediately and you get the hint.
There see, I just gave you two ways to use it that don't fit into your complaint. You're welcome. You're 24 and you already qualify for 'get off my damn lawn!'...how closed minded will you be in another 24 years?
There see, those two reasons aren't good enough for me. Thanks for trying. Just because I only gave one complaint didn't mean I had more. I didn't mind getting texts until I started getting spam, which is why I had them disable it. Am I closed-minded because I decided I'd rather not text? I'm not sure closed-minded fits so much as old-fashioned. I accept that other people prefer it, I just don't agree with them. Perhaps you are the closed-minded one, if you automatically assume people like me are so obviously in the wrong. But, if being closed-minded means I'm not a slave to today's "always connected" mentality then sure, I'll take it.
And yeah, get off my lawn.
Newer PC-like phones are getting us closer and closer to packets being commoditized. The cell networks don't want to become part of The Internet, but I think they're not going to have much choice in the matter.
You'll know when we get there, because this will happen: bye bye SMS, hello Jabber.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Wake me up, when credible evidence of agreement to increase or keep high the prices pops up...
You know, the kind, which trade union-members openly engage in with support from both lawmakers and public opinion...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
omg uc wt ur $4txts?
do you think the government is going to pay for all that SMS monitoring equipment? No sir, the carriers pass on the costs to you.
They're using their grammar skills there.
How do you Americans put up with paying for RECEIVING textmessages? You don't pay the mailman for the letters he brings to your door, do you?
In the calling-party-pays system, the person paying for calling the cell phone is NOT a customer of the cell phone company. Therefore the cell companies have NO incentive to provide competative rates for incoming calls. If you have to call someone, you aren't going to not call just because they are using company-x. In the mobile-party-pays system, the person paying is the cell phone owner, who IS a customer of the cell phone company and can shop around or choose a different plan to get better rates. The cell phone companies have a huge incentive to offer competative minute plans since people tend to shop around when buying a phone. Also, because there is no difference in calling a cell phone, this system allows people to abandon their landline phone and use a cell phone only -- no need for two separate bills. In the US most people have a plan that provides more than enough "free" minutes so that they never get a per minute charge. What is the charge to call a cell phone in a calling-party-pays country? The equivalent of $0.15/minute? On my mobile-party-pays plan I have NEVER come close to going over my allocated minutes, so the marginal cost per minute is $0.00/minute.
Pay $5 extra a month for AT&T to get 200 messages on a normal contract. That's what, 2.5 cents each? Yeah, I know they are giant evil corporations, and yeah, they are bastards for raising prices without telling anyone. But you can just as easily set your phone up to not download new messages. Or you could live like they did in olden days, and just... plan your calls.
In the calling-party-pays system, the person paying for calling the cell phone is NOT a customer of the cell phone company. Therefore the cell companies have NO incentive to provide competative rates for incoming calls. If you have to call someone, you aren't going to not call just because they are using company-x.
In the mobile-party-pays system, the person paying is the cell phone owner, who IS a customer of the cell phone company and can shop around or choose a different plan to get better rates. The cell phone companies have a huge incentive to offer competative minute plans since people tend to shop around when buying a phone. Also, because there is no difference in calling a cell phone, this system allows people to abandon their landline phone and use a cell phone only -- no need for two separate bills.
In the US most people have a plan that provides more than enough "free" minutes so that they never get a per minute charge. What is the charge to call a cell phone in a calling-party-pays country? The equivalent of $0.15/minute? On my mobile-party-pays plan I have NEVER come close to going over my allocated minutes, so the marginal cost per minute is $0.00/minute.
Though I don't send many text messages, I have friends who are addicted to it, and send them to me. I get charged for those, so a minimal text plan is a de facto requirement. (I'm with Verizon.) I had thought until yesterday that I'd be switching to a 3G iPhone come 7/11 - until AT&T released the pricing details yesterday.
"Unlimited data" costs $10 more than the old iPhone - fine, it's 3G, I can live with that. But on top of the data charge, they're now going to charge $5/month for minimal text messaging (200 messages) - EVEN THOUGH YOU ALREADY PAID $30 FOR UNLIMITED DATA. That's just rapacious. So the cheapest iPhone plan, with taxes and fees included, will now come out to around $90/month for me.
The extra $5 - and the idiocy of it - was the tipping point at which I decided to investigate alternatives and will probably stay with Verizon (whose network has been pretty reliable in my experience).
Your opinions and analysis may differ - fine. But I'm sure I'm not the only sale they lost because of this.
In my experience the mobile-party-pays system is MUCH better than the calling-party-pays system.
In the calling-party-pays system, the person paying for calling the cell phone is NOT a customer of the cell phone company. Therefore the cell companies have NO incentive to provide competative rates for incoming calls. If you have to call someone, you aren't going to not call just because they are using company-x.
In the mobile-party-pays system, the person paying is the cell phone owner, who IS a customer of the cell phone company and can shop around or choose a different plan to get better rates. The cell phone companies have a huge incentive to offer competative minute plans since people tend to shop around when buying a phone. Also, because there is no difference in calling a cell phone, this system allows people to abandon their landline phone and use a cell phone only -- no need for two separate bills.
In the US most people have a plan that provides more than enough "free" minutes so that they never get a per minute charge. Plus, the incoming caller ID is displayed before we pick up, so we have the option of rejecting the call and not paying. What is the charge to call a cell phone in a calling-party-pays country? The equivalent of $0.15/minute? On my mobile-party-pays plan I have NEVER come close to going over my allocated minutes, so the marginal cost per minute is $0.00/minute.
Yeah, if you could fit a telegraph in your pocket and use it inconspicuously when you're in a social situation in which it would be either rude or inconvenient to take/make a phone call.
Odds are if you're in a situation where it's rude to make a phone call, it's probably just as rude (if not worse) to fake paying attention while you text instead of *GASP* dealing with the real, live people right in front of you.
Programmer: an ingenious device that converts caffeine into code.
Mobile service providers are playing the only game they can to get more money off the same data. It's crap and it really pisses me off. They charge more for the same bits depending on how you plan on using those bits.
Example: the new iPhone plans go something like this:
$40 (voice) + $30 (data) + $20 (messaging)
WTF? Give me a data connection and I'll figure the rest out myself, thank you. Maybe Clearwire/WIMAX will suck less, but since it's owned by a Telecom company (Sprint, 51%), I have little hope.
Using the new Apple "cloud" feature, you can create software that sends messages and recieves messages from your friends, and using the cloud to do the communication.
You give this out as free software, Apple already said they will host it for free to boot. You circumvent using text messages.
Alternatively, you could use AIM or whatever, but I don't like AOL either.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
> On my mobile-party-pays plan I have NEVER come close to going over my allocated minutes, so the marginal cost per minute is $0.00/minute.
I assume you still pay a monthly fee for those allocated minutes. So you pay
(Monthly Fee) + (CostPerMinute * Max( (Minutes Called) - (Allocated minutes), 0) )
per month.
Suppose you only use your alloceted minutes, then you still pay (Montly Fee)/(Minutes called) per minute, which I doubt is equal to $0.00.
when I said "This means a change in price does affect demand significantly" I meant to say "This means a lowering in price does NOT affect demand significantly."
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Texting is backwards technology that is only popular because angsty teens lack enough social skills to actually talk to another human.
BS. Texting is perfect when you need to send a short message asynchronously. Especially when you don't have internet access for whatever reason.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
A little harsh that this is modd'd (couldn't resist) Offtopic... Although I can't say "never", I really have little use for text messages.. The one scenario where it's use made sense to me (over actually talking) was when I wanted to give a friend in a later time zone some information, and didn't want to take a chance of waking him in case his phone was on.. and if he had the net, I wouldn't have had to text him.... to me talking directly or to voicemail, makes much more sense... I think it's relevant, if you were discussing 3 way calling or call forwarding charges then the price of it compared to the number of people actually using it is something to examine.. I think it's taken quite a long time for SMS to take off here in the US.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Funny how this is slashdot and nobody has corrected parent's post about T1 speeds. Full T1s are rated at 1.5mbps (1,500,000 bits/sec) and do divide by eight to convert reasonably over to 187,500 Bytes (~183KBytes/sec) so not sure were you got the 197KB/sec from. Typical speeds of a T1 with TCP/IP overhead that I've seen is ~153KB/sec in real world uses.
So the total should be in a ~30.41 day (86,400 secs * 187,500 Bytes) is 492,642,000,000 Bytes (~459 GBytes) with zero overhead and etc...
While in my real world observation it is (86,400 secs * 156,672 Bytes) is 411,643,772,928 Bytes (~383 GBytes) with TCP/IP overhead.
Yes I do not use GiByte, etc... nor support them.
This space is not for rent.
While I despise the text message pricing model and do not text at all, I really like the peace of mind of not being bothered by telemarketing calls.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Cellular carriers give out free or subsidized phones as a method of keeping their customers signed up for long contracts. They keep a stranglehold on the equipment to further that.
However, by law when a carrier makes a material change mid-contract their customers, *all* their customers get a get out of contract free 30 day window. It's a great deal and you should exercise your rights when a carrier changes *anything* whether the change affects you or not.
So now that you know you are gaining important new rights that you didn't have before they raised the text message rates you can take advantage of that. You don't have to stop using the service, you can probably just cancel the agreement, though they may deny that. If they do just hang up and call back, it costs cellular carriers over $400 to acquire a customer, they don't want to lose you even month to month though they may deny that. So you're now month to month and can threaten to leave unless they give you another free phone. Heh.
FWIW I have done this. There was much gnashing of teeth at the cell carrier. Uh-oh. A customer who has actually read the contract!
.
nt
Wrong!
I live in Ukraine where ALL incoming calls are free by law. So cell companies HAVE to compete on outgoing call rates. And the do compete - I see a lot of advertisements like: "0.1 cent for all calls!".
Also, the stupid '300 minute a month' plans are also US specific. Most plans here are of debit 'pay-as-you-go' type. For example, I pay about $20 a _year_ because I just don't talk much other the phone.
These analyses are leaving out an important aspect of the situation: the delivery mechanism really does add value to the data. I am definitely willing to pay more for being able to receive data while I am on the street, with no PC in sight, trying to find a friend, than I am willing to pay to download yet another MP3.
Whether receiving a text message is worth 10 or 20 cents to you is a personal decision. I can tell you for me, if those 20 cents save 10 minutes of wandering, yeah, it's worth it. I would definitely not pay the same amount for ordinary chitchat over IM while sitting at my PC.
My friend never realized he paid for incoming texts when he had nextel. He thought he only paid for ones he sent.
So goofing around I sent him a text bomb (IE> Put his # into the To field as many times as the phone would allow and sent some junk text, then went to outbox and resent a few times).
He got 80+ txt messages, and nextel charged him something like $20 cents or more a text (can't remember exactly.. I'm actually thinking 50 cents because I had verizon) but he got a charge for somewhere around $40. He had to keep fighting about the charge to get it cleared. This is also when he found out he did infact pay for incoming.
Now why should you pay for unwanted text messages? It was a massive pain for him to get the text charges removes, and you can in no way control incoming texts. It almost seems like it should fall under the whole rule of a company can't send you some unasked for item in the mail and force you to pay for it.
Think of how much your phone bill would have ran back in the days before the do-not-call list if you had to pay the long distance charges for telemarketer calls. It's the same sorta deal.
On a side note, my friend has a Verizon prepaid phone deal. The one where you only pay if you use it. The days he didn't use it he would get a call from some 308 or something number, and when you answered there was no one there. He looked on Google and found out a lot of people were complaining about this number calling them, and it was put out there that it was a verizon # calling so they would get the $1 they charge for the days you use it. Not sure what it really is, but he's not the only one to encounter it.
"BS" is a bit harsh. I didn't say texting didn't serve a purpose (football scores). More importantly, I was defending the old guy who was called a luddite for no reason other than a general disdain for texting--a commonly held view in our circles. What's next, us old guys are luddites because we don't have a MySpace page? (Disclaimer: I have myspace, facebook and linkedin accounts and text maybe 20 times a year, mostly during football season).
According to Ad Age, 2007 U.S. ad spends for the big carriers were as follows, ranking is out of all U.S. advertisers:
(#2)AT&T - $3.2 billion (down 4% from '06)
(#3)Verizon - $3 billion (up 8% from '06)
(#11)Sprint Nextel - $1.9 billion (up 7.2% from '06)
It's just a big gouging merry-go-round in an attempt to woo customers into multi-year contracts, with a little SMS gravy on top. When I was in college, we'd switch our landline carrier every month or so to game the rates. Then 'free long distance' appeared, attached to a contract. Remember when Americans were capable of regulating their phone usage to manage a monthly bill? I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that the current contract model is way more profitable, even with the ungodly amount of advertising needed to get customers to switch. A common gripe I have is the lack of customer retention effort - the only good deals are for new customers, as if there's collusion to keep subscribers moving from carrier to carrier. But I honestly can't remember it being better before cell phones...hell, we rented rotary phones from Ma Bell. Monopoly or Oligopoly....don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
I've got a net10 prepaid phone. My rate is $.10/message received or sent. It hasn't changed in the 8 months I've had it. $15 a month for more minutes than I'll ever use, which then roll over to the next month.
Prepaid is definitely the way to go if you're not a huge phone user and don't need all that fancy intarweb connection crap.
You're nothing; like me.
What is the charge to call a cell phone in a calling-party-pays country? The equivalent of $0.15/minute?
I pay 0.069EUR/minute whether I'm calling a landline or a mobile, the price is the same for text messages (per message, naturally). And the calls within this cell operator are free, so calls to my SO / some friends are free. These are for outgoing traffic only, incoming doesn't cost me a dime. With the current exchange rates, that's ~$0.11 - however, the price has been the same for a few years, so from your perspective it was much cheaper before. The monthly fee on top of that is 3.90EUR, and since I like unlimited 3G data (~300kbps in real life, and I can tether my laptop to my phone unlike some trendy smartphone wannabees) that's 9.99EUR more monthly. But since I'm not a heavy caller, my average monthly bill is below 20EUR. I do make long calls on occasion though as I have some friends who suffer from severe verbal diarrhea - but they pay the bill, not me. So my bill is usually about ~$30. How much are you paying for your plan? Does it include unlimited, tethering-enabled data?
The cell phone signaling channel has a limited bandwidth, and that's what's used for SMS as well as call setup and tear-down. Any SMS use has to allow enough bandwidth left over to allow for near immediate dialing and ringing. You wouldn't want people text messaging to block you from dialing 911.
Raising the price is one way to discourage SMS usage enough so that on average, messages won't build up a backlog after throttling their rate down low for the available channel. It's standard econ 101. If you don't want to sell out some item in your store, then you gradually raise prices until the quantity sellers are willing to buy goes down to match the stock you have available on average. As long as SMS gets more popular, the rates will go up. Until SMS gets less popular, or some new protocol comes along.
on Verizon and other networks, we can implement a method to encode text messages in a voice call, using only our free minutes!
So...since the market did such a good job of getting us charged more than a first class stamp for sending a 140byte package of data across this wonderful 3G system, let's congratulate them...Maybe we need to let the Market elect our next president....or better yet, set governmental guidelines and policies.. I say we elect the "market" into Congress...they'll do a MUCH better job of screwing the country out of money than Congress.
Remember, it's not paranoia if they really ARE out to get you...
Don't most people pay around $5 to $10 for unlimited texting? Who is still paying per text? On that note, who still does not have unlimited voices calls, long distance, texting and internet on their phones? Services like Cricket have offered this for years for ~$50 a month.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
If i were to convert my Vodafone India rates to $, the charges are:
call:
1c/min to a cell phone
5c/min to a landline
sms: (1$/month fixed) +
50 messages for 1c.. so a message costs around 1/50c
Suckers!
http://dilemma.gulecha.org - My philospohical short film.
Guys, wait... you get charged for INCOMING SMS? what kind of country do you live in?
Anyway, here in Mexico we have some of the highest cell phone rates in the world, at least for voice; my plan for instance gives me a paltry 200 minutes air time. However, you only get charged for SMS you send, and they run 85 mexican cents (about US $0.08) per message. You can buy them in bulk in which case they're even cheaper.
I'm such a heavy texter that it made more sense to pay for blackberry internet service and use blackberry messenger instead. I probably send over 100 messages *DAILY* this way and I only pay a flat rate for BIS. Downside is, it's limited to blackberry users...
Our monopolistic telco (Telmex/Telcel) may suck, but they realize there's more money to be made in volume sales.
One good thing I have to say about Sprint is that they let you be grandfathered into plans. I've had the same Data plan for 8 years now, and pay $10/month for unlimited data access AND text messaging. It's one of the reasons I haven't changed carriers. I would end up paying $20/Month now for the same data access then $15/month for unlimited text messaging! It's just ridiculous what they're doing now that it's popular. I'm just damn thankful that I was an early adopter and Sprint hasn't forced me to pay more :)
Explain to me how rude it is to send a quick text message from a movie theater.
Is that why virtually all pricing plans in the US share the same basic pricing tiers and fee structures? Is that why it's nearly impossible to find a monthly plan that costs less than $30/month? And is that why all the companies are jacking up their prices on text messages at the same time?
Ah, the glorious efficient free market. Efficient at parting you from your hard earned dollars and putting them in the pockets of the already-rich.
As observed already, the bandwidth of a text message is a tiny fraction of that used by a voice call or a download--yet the cost for that bandwidth is astronomical. Why? Because they can get away with it. Because they collude on prices--it's to the benefit of the carriers for them all to gouge us. This is a lesson cartels have learned a long time ago. If there were such a thing as a "free" market and its alleged efficiency were a reality, then the price of text messages should be virtually free. This is an area that clearly needs more government regulation in order to protect consumers.
We don't need some government agency restricting our rights. If companies want to merge, that is their right by free association. Oligarchies can never freely exploit their power because some start-up is always waiting in the wings, ready to eat their lunch if they push people too far. The free market fixes ALL problems on its own, all government regulation does is get in the way.
Posting anonymously because of all the socialists here who down mod anything pro free market.
I still don't understand why in US the Incoming calls/SMS are charged. In India some mobile companies are offering payment for incoming calls http://www.virginmobile.in/plan_offer.html incoming calls are free for all (pstn/mobile) except when you are in roaming. Just consider it as the famous tag line In soviet union ...........
I've been a T-Mobile customer since 2001 and have been generally satisfied with their service.
However, recently, I started receiving spam SMS. Since I NEVER use SMS, I called customer service. I politely but very firmly told them that they textWILL now disable e-mailed SMS from my account. This was done. I also very firmly told them that, as a long-time customer, it is completely ridiculous to charge me 15 cents for each SMS that I don't want and don't use.
The guy gave me 30 free SMS and told me to call back and refresh it after a while. I absolutely refuse to pay any money for a technology that obviously is very low-tech and costs the carrier basically zilch.
Someday the SMS scam will be over. Then maybe I'll use it. When my then-fiance was in Ireland for four months in 2001, I could her for free. T-Mobile (then Voicestream) didn't charge a thing. Then some bean counter realised they could make a killing each time some 14-year-old texts "LOL" to her bratty friend!
In Canada I use a pay-as-you-go 7-11 SpeakOut phone which has a fixed 5 cents per text. Not sure if that applies to receiving texts (never checked but I don't so). It's available to Americans as well although it's run on a different network, but I would imagine the fees are similar. It's good for cheapies like me who don't talk endlessly on their cellphones and who prefer to text over talk. At 5 cents I believe it's worth it.
Added bonus of total anonymity since there's no signup when buying the phone or when you want to top up the funds on it.
I was referring to the cost of calling a cell phone from a landline, which from my experience in europe was much more expensive than calling another landline. And, to answer your second question, I pay Sprint US$30 a month for 500 daytime minutes, unlimited calls on weekends and between 5pm and 7am on weekdays, unlimited calls between my phone and a single number of my choice, unlimited long distance, unlimited 3G data and tethering, and unlimited text messages. Plus I got a free Palm Centro when I signed up.
In Austria I pay 4 cent for each sent text message and 4 cent for each outgoing call (per minute). I do not pay for incoming calls or incoming text messages. And I don't have to pay any basic fee either.
The major providers in Canada are Telus, Rogers, and Bell. I can't speak for Bell, but I believe that when I was with Telus a year or so ago I got charges for both incoming/outgoing texts, while with Rogers my bill shows that only outgoing texts are counted towards my limit/charges.
Checking Telus' site, it looks like they're not currently charging for incoming text anymore, but are planning to change back to doing so on Text messages received from another mobile phone are free to receive until August 24, 2008.
" If the same pricing was applied on a per-byte basis to a single MP3 song download, it would set you back almost $24,000 according to one estimate."
Several RIAA attorneys just wet their pants.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why do people put up with this?
Because the people who are the biggest users - namely teenagers - aren't the ones paying for it. Blame out of touch parents for paying for an overpriced service to entertain their children.
If you are James Bond contacting Q surreptitiously for instructions for how to use that blasted flame thrower in his watch, I don't think that would be rude at all.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I could mod you down, but instead I'll say, some apples do cost 17,000 times as much as some oranges.
Next you'll be comparing the price of gasoline to printer ink, if we filled our ink jets by the gallon.
What if you pre-paid for 40,687,488,000 Kilobytes worth of text messaging? I can get unlimited text and picture messaging from verizon for $80/month.
Seriously, the monthly cost of a T1 vs. a single text message? For your next trick, can you compare the per pound price of a mature bull at auction vs. what I pay for the New York strip at Bugaboo?
A marginally interesting question would be, why is the retail price of text messaging going up when the prices of most other modes of electronic communication are going down?
And the answer is, no one is forcing you to text message. If you don't like the price, don't buy it.
Really, did everyone forget that the Invisible Hand will fix this situation? A wireless carrier will offer their services at a much lower price, and then the customers will change to that carrier. Other companies will see this and lower their own prices, thus the Invisible Hand will prevail.
Unless, of course, the companies' managements see that it is in their own interests to maintain a defacto many-headed monopoly and watch each others prices with the single purpose of matching each other's price increases. Funny, but Adam Smith warned us, about something like that, what was it, oh yes: no two businessmen ever met together that didn't conspire to fix prices.
Some people might say I'm comparing apples to oranges, but Apples dont' cost 17,000 times more than oranges.
Granted, your numbers may not be entirely accurate, but the whole texting thing is out of control. The mobile world is also a fair example of what could happen to the rest of the Internet, if net neutrality is not maintained -- anyone looking forward to 10c/email?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I don't get these carriers. Verizon is one of the worst too. My Blackberry 8830 has a GPS receiver built in, but can I use it? No, not without paying VZ $10/month and even then I can only use their approved apps, not 3rd party apps like Google Maps. At least Google Maps will figure it out within a few square blocks based on the towers.
Charge me for TXT when I have unlimited data? How lame is that. I'll just use Google Talk or regular Blackberry to Exchange emailing.
Charge me for minutes? That's really lame too when I have unlimited data and can run a vpn from my laptop and a softphone. Yeah, it's not like I want to whip out my laptop to make calls, but if I'm remote and setup somewhere for a while, I can - all day long, and never make a VZ wireless call.
I'm more than willing to pay 20 cents for the convenience of texting from my phone and the 19.9995 cent premium over the actual data cost of my message is well worth it.
Let's say I buy bananas in 100-lb crates. Of course I would expect the price to be much lower than if I ordered a single banana that had been hand-picked by America's last virgin off the top of the highest peak of Hawaii.
That being said, I think phone companies should give us more control over accepting unsolicited texts in the first place.
Providers like AT&T charge both the sender and recipient... so that MP3 would be $48000.
Here in Canada, Bell Canada has announced that they will soon start charging for incoming text messages. To me this seems unfair since I can't control who sends me a message. And unlike with voice calls, I don't even have the option of knowing who is sending before I answer. This seems like an invitation to Spam to me.
It is my understanding that, in the EU, the initiator of the call or text message pays the cost. That sounds simple and sensible to me.
What is the situation in the US?
I hate text messages and try to avoid using them, but there is a time and place for them (just not many). If someone seriously can't talk, but needs to get the message across, then a text can be convenient. This often happens during work hours. Since I spend my entire work day in front of a computer, here's a little trick I use to avoid paying for text messages, and also making the conversation easier: First, you will receive a text on your phone. You have to pay for this one, but only this one. Don't respond on your phone. Bring up your e-mail, and send your response via e-mail to their phone. The address is generally @.com. You may need to look up the domain for the specific carrier. This also means you have to know what carrier the other person has. For Verizon, I believe it's @vtxt.com and AT&T is @txt.att.net (could be wrong though). Since it doesn't cost you anything to send e-mail, this message is free. Now if there is a response, hopefully, the other person just hits "Reply" from their phone. All responses should now go to your e-mail address. You are now sending and receiving text messages free of charge. Of course this only works if you're in front of a computer, but for me, extended text conversations seem to happen when I'm at work anyway.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
this logic is not operative. Providing competitive rates is not dependent on whether the person paying for the call is a customer of cell company or not. In a calling-party-pays system, the incentive for cell phone companies to lower their rates is the fact that all their customers plan to MAKE calls sometime or other. ONLY IF the carrier assumed that the mobile phone users will use the phone to mostly receive calls and not make calls will a calling-party-pays system result in non-optimum calling rates.
and btw .. I have been on CPP (calling party pays) system for both voice as well as SMS .. and my per minute charges are far far less than yours.
Also, me thinks you husband your conversations to make sure that you don't go over the allocated minutes. You should see the social & economic impact of being able to talk without worrying about the bill.
CPP is in the interest of customers. I think US prices are high because US telecom carriers are entrenched and there has been no serious competition there. once there is a skype kind of application for mobile phones and the customers have freedom to deploy it on their cellphones.. you would see rapid drop down in calling prices.
In fact, i feel that the most important beneficiary of the recent changes towards freedom to install any application on cells would be VOIP applications.
The parent raises the most prescient point. You can argue all day over what the cell companies costs are. But, without knowing a single thing about what the actual costs are, you can deduce that, since all data is digital, every bit costs, essentially, the same. With even a little knowledge of the bandwidth requirements of voice (different codecs/quality levels probably give diffferent bandwidth requirements, but while I'm no expert on codecs, a few minutes research showed typically bandwidth rates for various VOIP codecs to vary from about 8kbps to 40kbps; one would assume that, even if cell phone codecs manage better bandwidth utilization, they would still be in the ballpark of 2-8kbps).
In a typical month, most users, it would be reasonable to extrapolate, would use *hundreds* or *thousands* of times more bandwidth on voice traffic than text messages, meaning that the increased data traffic from their text messages amounts to something less than 1 percent of their total traffic, yet could represent 5 or 10% of their monthly phone bill (either because they bought an 'unlimited texting' package for like $5/mo, or payed 20 cents/msg.
But honestly, articles about how much people are getting ripped off by text messaging probably don't matter much in reality. I suppose there might, honestly, be a few people who just don't realize they are getting ripped off, but mostly, text messaging seems to be one of those things like cellphone ringtones ($2.50 for 15 second clips from a song that costs less than $1 for the *whole song* on iTunes, Amazon, etc) and movie popcorn - most people who pay for it, know they are getting ripped off, but, well, just don't give a damn. They like convenience, they feel there is nothing they can do about, and, well, it's *only* 5 or 10 bucks (at least, I can only imagine that's how they justify it to themselves).
The rest of the people, who realize that 5 or 10 bucks/mo, or 20c/msg, over the course of many months adds up to real money, and who don't like throwing their hard earned cash in the toilet, simply don't waste their money on stuff like that. I, personally, almost never use texting. My friends who do, just get the unlimited packages (and I politely request them not to text me unless they must).
Check this out... My country only has one cell-land-internet provider. Price per SMS: $0.005
Still think free market is better?
the vendor changes according to how *useful* the service is
Or, more accurately they charge what they can get away with to maximize profits before people start shifting to less suitable substitutes. In this case things like voice mail(or even old style answering machines), actual email, or just don't text.
Texting just shows that the cell phone service market is not very competitive.
Or, at least at the moment, that people don't choose their service providers on the basis of per-text charges. As others have noted, those that text a lot generally go for unlimited plans.
I had a choice of a whole two of the cell companies given my location(verizon and alltel), and I'm old-gen, I don't text or surf. I bought a phone on the basis of reception, battery life, and bluetooth. The bluetooth headset helps reception because there's only a few good reception spots in my house/area. Being able to stash the phone in one helps. I have the second cheapest national plan they offer(I do travel semi-frequently). I don't even remember what the fees for data or text messages are - because I don't do that. Though I am considering getting a data plan now - my cell can act as a modem using bluetooth with my new computer. Then again, I have high speed internet at home through DSL that'd kick the data rate I could push through my one to two bar signal zone, have high speed internet at work, and most hotels/motels today offer free internet. The biggest area for me to use my computer would be in the airports - and I'm not in them enough. Still cheaper than the $10-20 my local hub wants for the hour or two layover I generally have, but I just do without at the moment. I looked at it mostly in the 'wouldn't this be neat' fashion.
Back on text messaging - you could say the same thing for long distance rates, pay phones, per minute charge rates for going over your monthly minutes.
In fact, it seems that phone companies like doing the same thing as banks - offer plans/accounts with decent terms and rates - yet charge fees/penalties like crazy for any deviations.
I don't read AC A human right
Here in the US, we truly have only ourselves to blame for the prices of mobile communications. Carriers get exclusive licenses to use RF spectrum based on a highest-bidder system, which guarantees that the company who will/has charged the customer the most, gets the exclusive use of the spectrum. The government, through these auctions, and accompanying lack of regulation, simply colludes with the mobile carriers in establishing 'markets' with very limited competition, and extremly high barriers to entry.
Such a market, is, by definition, not a free market, and so you can't look to the free market to regulate the power and behavior of the principle actors. We let right-wingers blow smoke up our arses about free-market economics when they know good and well that they are creating non-free markets. Free markets work for commodities (whether goods or services), where virtually anyone with a mind to can compete, because of relatively small initial capital investments, and little government interference / barriers into the market.
In those type of markets, free market forces can often provide the best 'regulation' of the market, but not with something like telecom.
On prepaid accounts in NZ, you pay 20c [NZ Dollars] for each text you send. Bizarrely, even though we have some of the most expensive mobile rates in the OECD, it seems to work out to be even cheaper than the US in some cases.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
There should be a class action suit over this.
Slashdotters like to claim they are libertarians, but why is the answer to something a company does that you don't like always "lawsuit" or "sick the FTC on them"? Freedom of contract, people, which includes the freedom to make bad bargains as well as good ones, or not make them at all.
If you don't like a company's prices, don't buy it. That's freedom. Freedom isn't getting volutarily buying a service, then running behind Big Nanny's skirt and having a court or government agency to go after a company you don't like. That's government intrusion. I thought we didn't want that here, or are we only libertarians for ourselves, but screw the other guy?
As an Apple stockholder, I'm particularly sick of this "sue/regulate first, take personal responsibility and control your own destiny second" attitude towards companies.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Well I have MetroPCS as my carrier and they unlimited texting so I pay about $50 a month of my mobile phone bill.
I never really got that one. When I was in Canada in early 2000 (under Telus I think) I had to pay CND$0.10 just to receive messages.
Here in the Phil. it costs about US$0.025 to send and absolutely free to receive messages. There are only 3 big players which have their own towers, other companies are just piggybacking on the networks of the two larger telcos.
Texting is not about shooting the shit. It's about receiving a message in a bar about where to meet someone cause you can't hear them on the phone. It's about sending people a brief amount of information, without having to interrupt them. It's about leaving a message, without forcing them to waste time calling into their voice mail.
I barely use my cell phone and only have a pay as you go plan. If given the chance, I would uninvent the damn things (yappers drive me crazy). But even in my luddite ways, I can see the benefit of texting when used sparingly and in the right situations.
Actually, the main strand of anarchism today is communist anarchism. No market at all. So yeah.
If by "main" you mean "most popular then yes. Amongst contemporary published philosophers (e.g. Robert Nozick), some form of market anarchism on another seems to more popular.
Also, if you were going to have an "anarchist market", you wouldn't need regulation. Because the basic assumptions of Mutualism (the economic theory that anarchists who advocate markets advocate)
Important nitpick: not all market anarchists are mutualists. Unless you intend to take the ridiculous "anarcho-capitalism isn't really anarchism because anarchism can't be capitalist" position.
(FWIW I'm a market anarchist and neither a mutualist not strictly an anarcho-capitalist, but that's just because I've got my own original economic theory I came up with in the course of my philosophical studies. I'd be happy to describe it to you if you'd like).
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Unlimited data plans are usually around $20/mo. With it, you can do a lot more. If you have an iPhone, it keeps a constant connection to a push server that pushes notifications to your phone... so now you can just use instant messaging instead of text messaging. It's a lot cheaper, too.
Maybe that's what they're trying to force people to do.
Or maybe not.
A) Your insane prices cover your meticulously maintained streets and highways. We pay out the nose, and I still have to dodge potholes so as not to crack my wheels and suspension bits. The US infrastructure is seriously deteriorating to 3rd world conditions.
B) If you didn't want to drive, there's an alternative in public transit. Fuel prices can be high, because driving is a luxury. We have few alternatives. When I lived in Chicago, which has a (relatively) decent transit system, all of the trains hubbed downtown. So if you wanted to go to a stop on another line, you'd have to go all the way downtown, and come back out. With the infrequent service, you could wait up to half an hour for the transfer. It would usually take me 45 minutes to an hour to travel the equivalent of 5 surface-street miles. Now that I live in Los Angeles, well, we know how that goes.
is beacuse of people like me who have unlimited texting and use it alot so if we start abusing it (i send about 6000 texts a month *teenager*) someone has to pay for it, honestly i think the phone compnays need to get laid.... seriously a text message takes about 15kb your honestly trying to tell me it takes about 1.5-2 cents to send 1 kb ohh and i have a data plan on my phone 44 dollars a month, and i use about 600mb on that so lets see here 600,000 kb at 1.5 cents= ohh so 900,000 cents so its only 9000 dollars so your fine with a unlimtied plan but your bitching over a lazy 1.5 cent text oh and lets not forget the free ringtone commercals everyone falls for those and ohh wait theres a premium text rate, so the company can charge you for a permium text whats premium about it. honestly verizon needs to relax whats the fuss about ohh forgot to tell you,
New Zealand we are charged 20c to send a text on prepay, slightly less on contract, but we do not pay to recieve text messages. I do not undersand how those in the US let their cell providers get away with this.
While I wouldn't argue the carriers charges are reasonable there are some costs that are being overlooked by the majority of the comments.
In order to understand the charges you must account that fact that SMS uses SS7 transport and not TCP/IP, technologies nearly 25 years old. GSM air Interface and channel allocation for SMS is different to the interface for data. Any channels set up for SMS are used for pretty much just that and thats it, so any channel set up for SMS can not be used for voice or data traffic whereas certain cell towers can be set up to use data channels for either voice or data. The channels used for SMS are control channels (SDCCH or Standalone Dedicated Control Channel) and as their name implies must be dedicated to this task which means that a carrier that has more SMS transmission capability loses some voice/data transmission capability. Add to this that not all towers support the swapping between voice and data channels (meaning you have to dedicate channels to either one or the other) figuring out how to set up your spectrum allocation gets complicated.
Because of the legacy systems that support SMS you can't compare SMS data with other data. You must consider the infrastructure costs where not only the carriers make ridiculous profits but also their suppliers like Nortel and Lucent do also. When a carrier sends a text to another carrier there is a cost involved to the carrier. There must be joins between the carriers which both must pay for. Internationally this can get quite complex. Here in New Zealand this cost is more clearly reflected where you pay .03 cents provided the messages do not pass between carriers ie. where there no extra cost to the carrier. Messages to other carriers, in NZ there are three, are more expensive as each must pay the other for the function, if at a highly exorbitant rate. This is reflected in the charge to the customer as SMS between carriers are about 15 cents. Internationally texts are 22 cents again reflecting the number of different parties that must handle that message. This is not the internet, there is no Google, services cost money, all of which is reflected by what the customer pays. It is not just data like the internet. It must pass on the inside of the carriers network to other carriers using legacy protocols and private networks, this is where the extra cost is.
The carriers could easily bring the rates down, but it is not in their interest to do so while customers are still paying these rates.
in australia we can text at 1 cent a message.
no kidding
to anyone in australia
Up here in Ontario, I looked at my latest cell phone bill. There was a little note attached from Bell stating that in August they're charging 15 cents per INCOMING text message if you don't sign up with one of their text messaging plans.
How can they justify the double charging charging for outgoing and incoming on the same message?
Sprint wants to sell me 2 or 3 hundred text messages per month for $5. The most I've ever received in a month is 11. So until I start receiving more than 25/mo I won't cough up the extra $5/mo.
When travelling, it's ok if the airlines lose your emotional baggage.
texting is massive, its more popular than actually calling someone so almost all the operators have adapted to this, for instance meteor a couple of years ago offered a deal, top up your phone with 20euro credit and you can text anyone on their network for free and time for one month and the no of texts you can send for free was unlimited. Which attracted alot of young coustomers, they could all text each other for free! Now o2 have done the same but you can text any network in ireland for free!
The weekend has landed. All that exists now is clubs, drugs, pubs and parties. I've got 48 hours off from the world, man
>> the marginal cost per minute is $0.00/minute.
Really? So you pay $0 monthly to the telco?
Well I live in a calling-party-pays system where for $5 you get 50 minutes of call to any network(though the country is slightly larger than West Virginia) and each minute after is only $0.09 (Yes that is 9 US cents). So what were you saying about mobile-party-pays?
A while back I owed money to credit card companies. The only phone I had was a cell phone. The credit card companies were calling me constantly. I had cingular at the time. One day I realized my monthly minutes were running out and I shut the phone off because I didn't want to go into overtime and pay 45 cents per minute. I got a big surprise at the end of the month. I received a bill for hundreds of dollars of overage because when the credit card companies called me, the got my voice mail and the time they spent leaving me messages was counted as air time. I had to pay up, cancel my service, and pat the $175 early termination fee. The other thing that is interesting is that when you realize you are in trouble during a particular month, you can decide to increase your plan to include more minutes, but the increase doesn't take effect until the next month which means you get reamed for the remainder of the month even if you turn off your phone. While cell phones are convenient for receiving an placing calls, they are also a huge financial liability depending on your situation and whether you are popular, as in owe a lot of money. I share this story in the hopes that it will help people who haven't been there yet.
Here is Australia the Sender Pays for the SMS (av25c) to be sent, Its Free to receive calls even in a $5sim (ie$5p/m) , LandLine to Landline calls are Untimed, FREE Country Wide on many Plans. Prepaid Mobile (CELL for the yanks)is often cheaper than contracted rates. Pay Phones cost .50c Un-timed for a local call approx 80km radius