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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.'"
Did they send an email informing everyone of this?
Most companies have email to text capability, that I use regularly (much easier than typing, even on a qwerty keypad). How would they extend fee to an incoming email-to-text message? Or will that very convenient service be dropped?
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
ONLY the sender should be charged for SMS. You can't choose which ones you receive so why should you pay for them?
Two Verizon stories in a row, neat.
Does anything prevent content providers from using the email-to-SMS gateways to send messages for free? I know some companies who do this...
It requires the customer to tell you their carrier of course, and you need to have an up-to-date list of email-to-SMS gateway addresses for each carrier, but hey, it's free.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
but now everyone i know pretty much can email with their phones. and if not, there's an sms-email gateway, where you type their [phone number]@vzw.net or something like that. of course they have to pay for that, but if they reply, it comes in as a regular email, so you don't have to pay anything
such that i'm thinking of shunning sms use completely
sms is a wonderfully useful little signalling protocol... if it weren't being milked to death. so it will be discarded from general use, killed off by the phone company
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So, by Verizon Math, $.03 is equal to $3 dollars, right?
In the 90's there was an email circulating around claiming that the US Post Office was going to charge a fifteen cent tax on every email sent. I laughed myself silly about people that were actually stupid enough to believe it. If it ever happened, I was sure we could just encode emails so they wouldn't recognize them. Now, that I see people are actually stupid enough to *PAY* fifteen cents to send a message over the same lines on which they speak for free, it's not quite so funny anymore.
Will this apply to AIM sent text messages as well (if not, expect these people to automate it that way)? To send a text message from AIM, just open an IM to +11235551212 (+1, then the phone number without dashes). Or messages sent from Verizon's website?
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?
I never understood the "pay to receive" idea in the first place.
Anyway, in Australia (at least with one of the companies), you have two types of message. The ones that someone sends to you, and they pay for it. Then there are "premium" services (such as weather, news, games whatever), which you pay to request.
Charging to send AND receive? Greedy bastards should be lined up against the wall and shot.
Viva le revolution!
I wank in the shower.
so now verizon is charging other people money to *call you*. aren't you alrady paying verizon to have a phone number just so people can call you and send you messages.
you would have to be a real sucker to let verizon charge your friends and associates money to communicate with you, on top of what they are already paying *their* phone company to send the message in the first place.
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?
I know I need to loosen my tinfoil hat, but the article specifically mentions the Obama campaign's reliance on SMS as an organizational tool. 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.
Verizon couldn't have waited until December? Or November 15? Or November 5? No, they flip the switch just in time to make it more difficult for tech-savvy candidates (largely Democratic, hmmm) to send "don't 4get 2 vote!" reminders to their followers. Obama won't have any problems -- he could likely afford the "Free-2-End-User" service -- but smaller campaigns might have to drop their SMS reminder plans completely.
Of course, I'm suspicious of the way gas prices suddenly drop in October of years divisible by 4, too. :)
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
This is an outrage! If we let this continue eventually they'll charge both content providers and consumers for internet bandwidth.
If we're really lucky, this will destroy the SMS market completely and SMS will become only a quaint memory, like CB radios.
--Richard
So who's account is this going to benefit? Sounds like another "Golden Parachute" for someone.
"Well its really genius, see the Innotech software complies thousands of transactions a day that get rounded off. Well this just puts those fractions into an account and its so small no one will notice."
Everyone knows that SMS is a cash cow for the telcos.
In fact, some content providers, occasionally compared to massive primates, have a reputation for approaching telcos offering partnerships to provide data notice over SMS services through them (emai alerts, weather, stock, etc.) in exchange for a slice of the revenue pie from the receiving customer.
Furthermore, mapping a MSISDN (phone number) to carrier, and thus the internet-facing SMS Gateway, is a paid service that third paries provide -- content providers ALREADY pay to figure out which gateway to use to send an SMS to your phone. Of course this information is cached, but when a customer ports their number to a new carrior, until that cache expires, some of their notifications might get lost.
In Liberty, Rene
As a consumer, there are a number of carriers available. If you don't like Verizon's policies, just switch to one of the other US providers like AT&T/Sprint/T-Mobile. But this fee seems designed to soak service providers to Verizon's customers. They are much more likely to bend over and do some yodeling rather than forego the ability to sell things (or display ads/information) to Verizon customers.
Just another in the long series of customer unfriendly business decisions made by Verizon's management.
Cheers,
Phone companies would never rearrange pricing structures on hugely popular services just to wring more money from other companies that use them! I mean, look at SMS!
Anyway...even if they did, the "free market" would correct it...right?
I can't wait until I have "Premium" Internet with all those "High Definition" websites - it'll be sooooo much better. The phone company promised!
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
On all phones I have ever owned, the SMS is delivered to the phone and you are billed, regardless of whether you read it or not. I can't say for certain that your service is different, but I'd be very surprised if it were.
The CB App. What's your 20?
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.
I'm on a Net-10 "pay as you go" minute phone. It doesn't charge me unless I actually read the message; there is a "meter" on the phone's face that tells you how much airtime you have left.
Free Martian Whores!
This doesn't surprise me in the least. I dumped them as my cell phone carrier early this year because of all the little hidden charges. Each month the bill would be a little more but no change in the amount of useage( stayed well within the number of minutes on the plan) and no text messaging. I used to have Verizon for home phone and they did the same thing. Charge by the call. I dumped them for Vonage. Until the paying public gets fed up with bogus billing and charges and leaves the carrier they will continue. If enough people make a stink and go to another carrier ( I went to a pay as you go) then they might think twice. You have to hit them in the wallet or they won't care.
A fair price would be the same as all other data transfers. It's all bits anyway. You should pay the same price for a given number of bits, no matter what protocol you're using.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
At last something that might reduce spim.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The article is tagged greed because Verizon is charging both the sender and the receiver of the messages. It would be like the post office sending you a monthly bill for every item of mail you receive (whether you requested that mail or not), even though all the mail was paid for with a stamp by the sender.
I am all for sender-pays messages. It puts the onus of payment where it belongs: the party choosing to engage in communication. It can cut down on spam, and it still allows me to receive messages from content providers (the content providers can always charge me for the service).
Since you asked.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
So .03 absorbs cost involved... But they charge their own customers .40 per message. .20 to send and .20 to receive.
Interesting...
~ Ron Fitzgerald
Unfortunately 'voting with your feet' doesn't work in these instances as all the major players follow suit soon after.
~ Ron Fitzgerald
T-Mobile has always double-dipped -- one SMS message is 20 cents per direction. So, if both parties text ala-carte, then it's 80 cents: 20 cents for you to send, 20 cents for your friend to receive, 20 cents for your friend to send a reply, and another 20 cents for you to receive that reply.
I bet you other companies are doing the same boofin' thing.
Is there a way to send/receive SMS over a data connection in a manner that preserves all of the customs of conventional SMS (eg, send message to phone number from ordinary phone)? I seem to remember having the choice of using GPRS as the "data bearer" for SMS on one of my old phones, though I can't seem to find it on my current phone...
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
This is horrible news for ChaCha. They currently pay their guides $0.10 for every question answered and $0.20 per question for Top Guides. I used to question their business model, wondering how much money could really be made from advertisement on their website alone. However, for the past week or so they've been running advertisements for the McDonald's Monopoly game in all the question responses instead of a link to more information about the question.
But $0.03 is a pretty big hit. I wonder if they will take the hit themselves or pass it off to the guides by cutting their payments.
Also, Verizon sucks.
Cell phone companies have forever been charging people to send AND receive phone calls, text messages, etc, as well. Isn't this just making everything else in line with that?
Twinstiq, game news
I canceled my Verizon Wireless yesterday (for other reasons). If you want out of your contract with no questions asked, print out This page and take it in with you to the verizon office. Tell them this is a change to your contract and that you would like to cancel. Ask them to waive the cancel fee. Done. You even get to keep your phone (they told me to sell it on Ebay). This assumes that you were a customer back in April.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
People say things like "I disagree with candidate X, but I'm voting for him anyway." Just out of curiosity, what exactly would the Republicrats have to do to actually lose your vote? Start a war? Wreck the economy? Oh wait.../quote News flash...Obama is a democrat. So if he is voting for Obama no matter what, the Republicans never had a chance to loose the guy. You cant loose something you never had.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
Its working so well for comcast and their customer screwing, it was just a matter of time before the practice spreads.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
... because the cost of providing SMS infrastructure is so astronomical compared to that for digitized voice services! How could they not attempt to recoup at least a small fraction of that huge expense?
This is why I love unrestrained capitalism and despise anything that hints of socialism.
(No, I'm not happy to see you, that's my facetious tongue in cheek.)
They could be charging us instead. Anyway, the only SMS I receive from those kinds of companies is spam, because the cost of sending SMSes telling them I want something from them is prohibitively high. If I had Verizon, I would be glad that those spammers were getting charged.
As a little followup: I use my phone exclusively in UMTS mode, so I'm never using the GSM network with it's transmission of SMS through the expensive paging channel. In UMTS, as I'm sure is the case for all of the 3G networks, SMS is just treated like any other low priority data, so the justification for charging more for transmission loses its meaning. I wonder if the telecom companies plan to keep charging so much for SMS long after the "need" to charge for it has evaporated (actually, I'm sure that they will).
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
US.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
This is another chapter in the war between SMS and IM. Which will be won by the latter, I guess.
Anyway, Verizon is probably reacting to services like this which makes sending SMS from an IM client free. Install an IM client on your phone and you have free SMS.
In the long run, my guess is, we will be all using IM clients to text each other in cell phones. They will consume (a small amount of) bandwidth from our 3G data plans. They will allow us to communicate not only with other cellulars, but with computers, PDAs, and other network devices. And they allow us to text someone in the other side of the world just as easily as in the same city.
SMS may be living a brief moment of glory under the sun. Unless, of course, operators decide to charge it more competitively -- soon.
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
While technically accurate and wholly logical, what good does the policy serve the userbase when 90% of your userbase doesn't understand bits?
I like the suggestion, and it'd make good sense to me... But Joe Sixpack would have a rough time wrapping his head around why it costs more to text "hey dude" than to text "hey bud".
Not to mention, if they started charging by bit for phone calls, we'd be talking in HD in no time so the telco's again could charge us more for the same old service.
Overclockers
Except SMS uses space in the control channel which is very low bandwidth (ok, modern equipment generally uses 2.5/3G first but it will fall back to the subchannel if needed).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
.03 dollars or .03 cents?
This must be to cover the settlement they plan to make for the 1200 email addresses they exposed.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
I have SMS completely shut off on my phone. I get funny looks from friends when I tell them that.
Good-bye
Except SMS uses space in the control channel which is very low bandwidth
And SMS messages are limited to 160 bytes. A typical SMS is smaller than a single frame of voice data (33 bytes for GSM). The costs per-SMS round down to zero.
> That said... you want 'Real Change'?
Obama likes to make a big deal that John McCain voted with George Bush 95% of the time.
Presumably, that's bad .
Presumably, that's bad because Bush's approval rating is something like 29%.
Presumably, that's why Obama keeps telling us we need to vote for change.
But... Barack Obama voted with Democrats 96% of the time.
And the Democrat-controlled Congress' approval rating is something like 13%.
So... Where is the change that Obama will be bringing?
Well, there you go. Rightly or wrongly, I'm very surprised, just as promised. You should see how wide my eyes are. You'd think I'd be used to it, as often as I'm wrong...
The CB App. What's your 20?
I voted for Nader in 2000. I'm voting for Obama because he exemplifies (I'm using that word correctly, look it up) the kind of politics Nader was proposing: resisting tainting outside influences and getting the money you need to run from the people who will vote for you. People like me, as I've given hundreds of dollars to BO.
Not all democrats are the same, neither are all republicans the same. And nobody will agree with me on everything.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Re: Your cripling of SMS service providers
Message: Go fuck yourself
-nick
This is exactly how it works in Europe, and fucking good for it too. Maybe I will get less spam on my AT&T if they have to pay 3 cents to send it to me. I wish it was more than Verizon doing this..
My only problem with it would be, Twitter mobile updates may go the way of the dodo to Verizon services. And I still pay 20 cents for a text which is a fucking rip off.
What kind of phone/service do you have? I have to pay when I receive the message, whether I read it or not.
Have you driven a fnord... lately?
You must wait a little bit before using this resource; please try again later.
I didn't know my Sega Master System could send text messages! I'll pay 3 cents for that! ...or is it anotehr SMS?
Lucky you guys until now, in Europe most precisely in Portugal Mobile companies charge 0.05â ($0.068) for each MT (Mobile terminated) message.
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.
If you're on Net10, then you should check that price list again...
You only pay 5 cents per message, not 10, and certainly not 20.
You would, however, pay 10 cents to send a text and then receive a response.
And when sending the 5 cents is flat -- so you can send a long text (displayed to your recipient in 3 parts) for the same 5 cents you'd pay to send a single character.
I used Verizon prepay, then Cingular, and for the last year or so Net10. It's the cheapest prepay plan I've found yet.
On most you pay a daily charge of some sort. On Net10 it's just the 10 cents a minute and 5 cents a text.
It uses the Cingular network, so it does use SIM cards but they're (unfortunately) crippled.
There are 2 exceptions:
1. Alltel has a pretty awesome prepay plan where you can add a-la-carte options like free texting. Alltel could turn out to be the best option for certain callers.
2. If you don't use your phone for at least 10 minutes a day on average you will end up paying the equivilent to the Verizon daily fees I mentioned:
When you buy airtime it has an expiration: if you buy $30 in airtime (300 minutes) you have 30 days to use it. ($90--900 mins--has 90 days, etc).
After that time any remaining mins you have expire.
This is ONLY a problem if you rarely use your phone because this actually accrues.
That is, if you were to add $30 airtime to a new phone today you'd have 300 mins to use by 11/10.
On 11/1, if you have (say) 200 mins left, you can buy another 300 minutes for $30 and your expiry date is pushed back to 12/10.
I've had Net10 for about a year and my expiry date is now sometime in 2012.
Finally, you can get an ok Nokia phone for free. It's $30 but includes 300 minutes in airtime.
I can add airtime using prepaid cards, the internet, or right from my phone as long as I've setup my CC details.
(Of course, most of this has been for the benefit of wh
Seems like Twitter would really get hammered by this. If they have to pay 3 cents per SMS, they are going to lose even more money. They had to stop offering UK service because of SMS charges. Since they have no business model or revenue, this could be serious.
Unfortunately 'voting with your feet' doesn't work in these instances as all the major players follow suit soon after.
<cynic>I think Ritz_Just_Ritz might have meant leave the country, as the wireless plans in Japan, Korea, and several European countries appear to gouge less.</cynic>
You should pay the same price for a given number of bits
You're paying for low latency. I can move terabytes real cheap if the recipient doesn't mind waiting several days.
I don't get charged for incoming calls. Neither should you.
While there are other things I don't like about them (Such as how difficult it is to sign up for unlimited data - the reps can't seem to grasp that I just want a data pipe to my phone!?), in this regard they've been pretty good. Still waiting for a GSM network, though I don't think that's going to happen any time soon...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The + stands for the international dialing code... 011 So, to answer your question, to dial a +, dial 011
There's no place like localhost
fucking absurd, this is the two-tier network, this forces small ingenuous services out and only google chacha etc are then able to participate, huting the telecoms with decreased usage, seriously the sms messages cost them nothing, they use basically zilch bankwidth, by cutting off the network interconnects they hurt themselves and their customers.
...Their anti-customer policies are ...
why I gave them up forever. Of course they are gouging you while they can, they see the writing on the wall, they know the party can not continue forever and ever treating customers as they all do - bad.
They all suck. Don't take my word for it, google it yourself...
Google the name of the provider + other descriptive words. Verizon, scam is an example. Cingular, scam, fraud. TMobile, fraud or T-Mobile, fraud. etc.... Sprint, sms, scam, fraud, problems, billing, etc.... use your imagination.
I did not bother to do any of those again, having done it in the past and finding poor or no customer service in all cases....
None of them are any good.
Vote with your feet, it does work, find a good VoIP provider and never look back. Sure people will have to leave you a message when you are not at home or the office or a WiFi FREE hotspot (they are all over the city and the software is free so that you can open your own FREE WiFi HotSpot, which in turn allows you to use many other hotspots around the world for free. Just do not tell your service provider as they try to make this activity illegal and will cancel you if they can prove it. You can even make money as your WiFi hotspot can give someone a free 5 - 15 minutes and charge them a fee if they need more. Heck look at all the TMobile and Verizon hotspots where they charge you $5.95 for like 5 minutes....)
If you need an emergency phone, get a prepaid phone and NEVER GIVE OUT THE NUMBER TO ANYONE! That way if you are in a bind, you can make a phone call. Protects you from creditors if you are ever unlucky enough to lose your job to no fault of your own...never give out the number and no one can call you, but you can call out. (And your prepaid minutes should last for a full year minimum, they are out there, look around).
Once you decide that others can leave a message and you can get it later (it use to be considered rude to answer the phone in public or at home when you have company) you can get all the service you need for less then $100 per year.
PER YEAR is correct! I pay less then $8.40 per month (for over 3 years now - I know it works) and am loving it. I get more then 80% of my phone calls and messages at either home or work anyway, so a few people have to wait to hear from me, it won't kill them and with my savings I can buy a new ultra notebook computer every year if I want!
If a company insists on being able to call you 24/7 and you agree to this without some additional pay for the inconvenience to your life...well you are crazy. Time is money, (respect of your personal time by your work is priceless) if you do not force them to pay you extra for such interruptions you might just as well tell them that your time is not very expensive. At least force them to pay for the service, i.e. they buy the phone and pay the bill, its the least they can do.
Is your Internet Throttled? Install DD-Wrt, OpenWRT or Tomato to learn the truth! Google: 1Gbps/1Gbps: 5 Communities