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Verizon To Charge Content Providers $.03 Per SMS
An anonymous reader writes "It appears that Verizon is going to start double-dipping by charging both consumers AND content providers for SMS text messages. Verizon has informed content partners that it will levy a $.03 charge for messages sent to customers, effective November 1. From RCRWireless: 'Countless companies could be affected by the new fee, from players in the booming SMS-search space (4INFO, Google Inc. and ChaCha) to media companies (CNN, ESPN and local outlets) to mobile-couponing startups (Cellfire) to banks and other institutions that use mobile as an extension of customer services.'"
ONLY the sender should be charged for SMS. You can't choose which ones you receive so why should you pay for them?
It seems only fair that the senders of messages should be charged regardless of whether they are content providers or consumers. Why should a peer-to-peer twit be charged more than an ESPN score update?
With email on your phone so common, why would you even want SMS and all it's limitations and cost?
What is it with US telcos and SMS. SMS was an accidental hit in Europe; an engineering tool that people discovered and used free. Now the telcos over there have modest charges for sending it and rake in billions each year. But in the US first they tried to charge for sending and receiving, then massively increased the cost and now this. What is it US telcos have against SMS, I genuinely don't understand?
You pay a service contract fee for a data line.
You pay an extra fee for using that data line to send SMS messages
You pay and extra fee to use that data line to send http, pop, smtp, https traffic
You pay an extra fee on top of that if you want to use that data line to connect a computer
All at fees that are going up exponentially while cost per bit goes down for the company, I would love to see those margins. This is what is going to happen to your internet service soon people.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
I think it's safe to say that Verizon and its little friends are big fans of the current surveillance-friendly administration, seeing as how the W administration just gave the telcos the world's largest "Get Out Of Jail Free" card with their little "retroactive immunity" bill.
*sigh* Obama voted for it. (I'm voting for him anyway.)
Of course, I'm suspicious of the way gas prices suddenly drop in October of years divisible by 4, too. :)
They drop every October. Every September, too. People drive more in the summer.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Most of the rest of the world doesn't charge to receive SMS, only to send it. The receiver's network charges the sender's network a small amount for each one (although the big networks don't pay anything). The only email to SMS gateways either charge money or are run by the networks themselves. A few tried to be bidirectional - receive SMS messages (and charge the sending network) and then forward them to email, but I don't know of any of these that still survive since people only used them one way.
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The only reason I would agree with this model, and with the same model to be implemented into email messages, is to be able to avoid having spam as we know it. Imagine the guy that wants to use someone else's account, it would take very little time if someone charged up a whole bunch of emails even at .0001 cent it would still trigger a flag somewhere that I am being charged for emails I am not making, or that the spammers would have to make a whole lot more money then this to stay afloat.
He's not talking about emailing from your phone. He's talking about sending an email to your phone that gets delivered as a text message. Big difference. There's no data plan involved.
Verizon will send a text message to my phone if someone sends an email to <my number>@vtext.com and happily charge me for it, even if it's spam. There's no way for them to charge the sender.
End of line..
This does not affect mobile-to-mobile SMS, consumers will not see any charges (unless the content provider chooses to recover costs from consumers). My understanding is that this fee will be 3 cents for every premium or standard-rated SMS sent from a shortcode to a Verizon subscriber, unless the message is from a non-profit/charity or is "Free to End-User" (whatever that means, I don't know the difference between an F2EU SMS and a standard-rated SMS).
My biggest concern is that we're not going to be able to stop this, and once Verizon adopts this policy every other carrier will as well. This has the potential to seriously affect the mobile content industry.
Seconded. And there's no surcharge for using the GPS capabilities of your device, or for tethering it to your computer as a modem. Verizon nickel and dimes you with all of their "additional" services. The only thing they have as a benefit is better coverage, and that's rapidly waning. I'll deal with not having coverage as far into the mountains as Verizon does if it means I save $50/mo on the same services.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
If everyone just refused to send txt messages to Verizon users it wouldn't be long before angry subscribers got this idiotic charge dropped or they moved on to another service. I for one would be moving now and not waiting. But then - I have already moved.
By far the thing that bothers me most about text messages is paying for the privilege of receiving SPAM. If they pick a price point that puts an end to SPAM then this is a great step. But, I don't suppose that could happen. Given the money they make from the receivers, they'll make an exception for the spammers so they don't cut out that revenue.