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Senator Questions Rise In US Texting Prices
vimm writes "Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) has started an inquiry on the rising prices of text messaging (up 100% since 2005) that has occurred almost in sync with the consolidation of 6 major carriers down to 4. In a letter sent to Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile, Kohl said the increase 'does not appear to be justified by rising costs in delivering text messages.'"
This message just cost me $427 to text.
Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) has started an inquiry on the rising prices of text messaging (up 100% since 2005) that has occurred almost in sync with the consolidation of 6 major carriers down to 4.
Well, it could be that the competition was driving prices down to a lower level and then after the two consolidated, this (money losing) price reduction natural re-adjusted back up.
Another reason could just be that it's just as easy to sell plans at 10 cents a txt as it is to sell them at 5 cents a txt. We simply don't realize the cost adds up as consumers.
It could also be that people use text messages about twice as much now as they did in 2005 and the hardware just can't take it, so they adjust the price to reduce usage.
I think we've discussed this absurd price before. I am quite naive about the whole electrical engineering side to this but well versed in the software of it. If it costs nearly nothing for me to talk for a minute, why couldn't they wrap the txt into a digital signal identical to what our vocal signal is wrapped up in and just let the receiving unit decode it as a special text message across the same audio range (like the old phone modems)?
My work here is dung.
If so, text "Text" to 8398 for updates! Standard text messaging rates apply!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Another interesting question: my phone service (through Verizon) has free after-hours calling, but I pay the same rate for text messages and other data services regardless of time of day. Surely if the data from my phone call is cheaper to transmit at 10pm, then the data from my SMS message is too?
For other senators, maybe. Look at Khol's record, though, and you'll see he's generally far more pro-consumer protection than nearly any other Senator.
We respectfully take your concerns into consideration, and present you with this money basket. We hope that this free donation to your re-election campaign, brand new BMW, and lakehouse are enjoyed thoroughly by you! Thank you for ceasing your inquiry - err, we mean, thank you for invariably enjoying our gifts!
Love,
The Telcos
Usually it's conservatives who argue for the free market to sort things out, and liberals want increased regulation.
Anyway, it would be good to let the free market sort this out. The fact that it hasn't implies that the cellular market is not free. Free markets work because of competition, the high prices of text messages indicate that there's no competition in that market. That's not a good thing, regardless of which side of the aisle you identify with.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The police: When seconds count, we're there in about eight minutes.
Or maybe a showy issue that most americans can identify with, will help non-technical americans realize how badly monopolies are robbing them? You know, and I know, that the cost of sending a text message is so incredibly small charging any amount of money beyond voice service is essentially highway robbery. But many people think it's new, and thus must be a huge complicated thing.
Yeah, text messages themselves are stupid secondary problems. But waking people up, and forcing them out of the idiocy of news tv talking heads, and forcing them into the cognitive dissonance caused when they realize businesses are hurting them because capitalism ISN'T working as designed... that helps a lot. Otherwise it sounds like a bunch of pompous academics in suits talkin fancy words and talkin smack about god and the president.
Unfortunately, I'm sure we're all aware this is just a senator trying to make it look like he's rattling a few cages
Actually, afaic, Herb Kohl is one of the few good guys left in Congress. And fwiw, since he's got his own millions of bucks from the Kohl's department store chain, he doesn't need money from anybody. Got his own stash, thank you very much. So while I wouldn't deny that he's a publicity whore (duh! he's a politician!) I would say that it's a safe bet that, oddly enough, he's pushing this in part simply because he's disgusted with the telecom companies.
Now if only HE would run for president.
A man's gotta dream; ya know?
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
In CDMA, the broadcast from one base-station is divided into many channels ... 1 pilot, 1 sync, 1-8 paging, and up to 61 traffic channels (per frequency channel). Ignoring the pilot and sync, which allow the cell phones to find and synchronize the the system, we have paging channels where the phones watch for messages from the base station letting them know what channel to go to for an incoming call, and traffic channels for those calls.
Into this system, text messaging was bolted on as an afterthought. These are short messages, so they get sent out on the paging channel, since it isn't worth the time and effort to set up a traffic channel, only to tear it down again 80ms later, after the message has been transmitted.
Then came unlimited text messaging plans, and teenagers. "Hi sue! How R U?" [send] "Gr8! Saw Bob at park." [send] "Really? What was he wearing?" [send] "The shirt you bought him!" [send] "Awesome!" [send]. All of a sudden, relatively speaking, the text messaging system volume overloaded the paging channel's regular traffic. Network areas which only ran a single paging channel, suddenly needed to assign more channels to paging. Ok, not a problem, the standard allowed for up to 8. But in areas where a lot of phones were in use already had multiple paging channels. These find themselves in running out of paging channel bandwidth, while large swaths of traffic channels are not in use.
The problem isn't that text isn't cheap to send. It is the standard and the system were developed for voice traffic, and a tiny fraction was reserved for short data messages. The use case of teenagers with unlimited text messaging wasn't considered. To change the standard, and the systems which employ the standard - such as to add more paging channels - will require new phones and/or software upgrades to all existing phones out there, or they'll suddenly not work. It isn't just a matter of upgrading software in the network base-stations.
If guns kept people safer we'd be allowed to carry them on commercial flights.
I must say, I love the logic of that position! Let me try one:
If bottled water kept people safer we'd be allowed to carry it on commercial flights.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You're talking to a society of people that will spend $1.25 for a bottle of water out of a vending machine which is sitting right next to a water fountain.
Prices will go down when people stop using the service.
In this case, the SYNC channel message tells the phone how many paging channels there are, and only has 3 bits for this information. And the sync channel message doesn't have any versioning information, so they can't add another bit without breaking all existing phones.
Even with EV-DO (data optimized), text messaging still has a fundamental problem: it is short. If a traffic channel is brought up to send the message, the base station has to tell the access terminal (cell phone, but we're talking EV-DO here) to go to listen on the particular channel, the AT has to send back a report on how fast it can receive data (based on SNR), before the base station can send the message. This all takes time - unnecessary overhead. But to send the text message on the paging channel means (in the case of EV-DO) sending it at the slowest possible data rate, since it doesn't know the SNR of the AT and thus the speed it can receive the transmission at. It has to default to the lowest possible speed.
EV-DO is great at sending large swaths of data at high rates. For short message services, it suffers the same overhead inefficiencies CDMA does.
Email usually requires a data plan of some sort, which usually isn't free. Using ala cart SMS is usually cheaper than signing up for a data plan if you plan to send less than 25-30 messages a month. Plus SMS messages are received without user intervention or setup. Now some of us have push-email that allows us to receive email (or be notified of email) as soon as it hits our inbox, but I doubt the average joe shmoe has it. On the other hand, I'm sure he probably has an SMS equipped phone if it's been bought in the last 4-5 years.
if we'd just established a national telecom network rather than give subsidies to the telecoms so that we can pay for the infrastructure they ream us for using, then this wouldn't be happening.
IT/communications infrastructure is just as important as roads and sewers these days. and there are much more efficient ways of managing our national communications network than the mess of private networks we have right now--which does not give us the benefits of consumer choice, yet still lacks any kind of centralized planning which a natural monopoly ought to have.
if all communications infrastructure could be nationalized, the first thing to do would be to:
compare the progress & development made on the internet/web as an open public communication network with that of our nation's cellular networks. very little innovation or technological progress has been made in cellular technology because these proprietary networks are closed to outside developers. only a small number of handset makers are given permission to build devices for use on these private networks, and the telecoms' tight grip of these networks preclude the possibility of adopting new features.
and since the internet can handle the transmission of digital video, audio & text just fine, there's no point in having redundant communications networks that are dedicated to TV/radio/telecommunication--especially in the case of long distance calls and text messages where telecoms charge extortionate prices for something which costs close to nothing to accomplish through the public internet.
and if cellular networks were converted into municipal wi-fi coverage, not only would it provide ubiquitous wi-fi internet access for everyone, but we'd stop having to pay extortionate rates for cellular data plans. we would be converting a highly specialized network of limited usefulness to a much more generally useful network that can accomplish all of the same things and more.
Capitalism works just fine ... text messaging is too expensive, so I don't use it.
There ... capitalism at it's finest. If someone using text messaging is complaining it's too expensive, then maybe they should look at alternatives or STFU. THAT is what capitalism is all about.
Oh. So when I get a message telling me that Zoltan has prepared my fortune for me, or that my Perfect Crush is waiting for me, or I can find out my top five Perfect Lovers and I get dinged $0.10 apiece for receiving them, just exactly how is that "capitalism at its finest" and how, pray-tell, am I supposed to stop 'using' it?
Per-text messaging rates exist to punish those who send or receive the occasional message. It has nothing to do with the big "problem" the telecom companies are talking about - the power text users who're "clogging" the network with their flurry of messages. Those, you see, are on low-priced fixed-rate unlimited message plans so they remain unaffected.
It's simple math. At $0.10 apiece, unless and until I start sending/receiving more than 50 messages consistently each and every month it's not worthwhile for me to sign up for a plan - even though it's a mere $5.00 per month. However any time I talk to a rep from my phone company they tell me my option is to do just that.
This isn't capitalism; it's extortion.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Funny enough, in 1900, AT&T (majority owner of Western Union at the time) charged $0.30 per text message over the telegraph. 108 years later, they've shaved off 10 cents per message.
Progress! Profit!
That's the problem right there. In the US, the person *receiving* the message pays for part of it. In sensible countries (like Australia), the person *sending* the message bears the full cost - there is zero charge to receive a message.
As a result, there is a *lot* less SMS spam in Australia.
"Or are you implying that all Senators are in collusion and fighting only for lower text-messaging costs?"
No. They are all going after populist minor problems that everyone can agree on, but aren't major issues. Most of the time, the problems they examine aren't solvable by congress directly anyway and its a huge waste of time. Congress has examined Exxon multiple times, but usually only in an election year. They are letting the real problems slide in order to get re-elected more easily. The entire process has become circular. "If I vote for this my critics will tear me apart and I won't be re-elected to solve problems in the future". Sound familiar?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Yep. Because I'd have one too. So if he is a bad guy, I will see his, he will see mine, and probably figure I'm not the only one. So more likely, he's another one just like me.
Meanwhile, the other guy's thinking: "Whoops. Looks like dumbass brought a gun to a plane fight."
Breakfast served all day!