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AT&T Kills $10 Texting Plan, Pushes $20 Plan
Hugh Pickens writes "AT&T is scrapping its 1,000-texts-for-ten-bucks plan and replacing it with a plan that offers unlimited texts for $20. Users who don't want the unlimited plan can opt to pay 20 cents per text. Current AT&T subscribers are grandfathered in, so you can stick with whatever plan you selected when you signed your contract. 'The vast majority of our messaging customers prefer unlimited plans and with text messaging growth stronger than ever, that number continues to climb among new customers,' says AT&T. The news has not been received warmly in the tech blogosphere. 'AT&T calls this "streamlining." We call it what it is: an outrageous, gigantic scam,' writes Sam Biddle in Gizmodo. 'AT&T's taken away new customers' option to spend less, whereas carriers like Verizon still offer tiered texting plans for varying budgets.'"
They'll charge whatever the market will bear. Luckily for them, they partially control the market too. Imagine what the market would bear if they acquired Verizon as well...
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
If you don't like it, don't buy it or better yet, take your business to Verizon. Simple as that.
It's sickening to read all the self-entitled bitching that's been going on about this change. Everyone knows text messages are a huge money maker, and I applaud every company's decision to milk it for all its worth.
virgin has android phones with totally unlimited plans. and their android phones are only $149
oh wait, someone with an IQ that is higher than everyone here combined has figured out that if you sell a crappy and slow phone it will limit total data usage and that's why they can sell unlimited. or that the usual whiners don't want to pay $700 for a cell phone and then complain why the carriers are charging so much money.
Was it CDMA or GSM that simply inserted SMS messages in their status update packets, essentially making the data transmission free for carriers?
I agreed with this in 1996. Now I just think that anyone that pays any price for SMS is retarded.
Calling is not just data. It does not use the same system (note that often times you can make calls but don't have a data connection) (text messages also do not go through the data connection. You can often text even when you don't have a data connection).
I guarantee you that it costs carriers much more than $10/month/subscriber to transfer their data. There is a very expensive infrastructure involved, using a lot of electricity. Wired bandwidth is the least of their worries as far as cost goes.
This is why I stick with Tracfone... I typically use 150-180 minutes per month, including 20-30 text messages (sending and receiving). I'd love to go with Verizon, as they're the only carrier with coverage in most of NY and would settle for ATT... except NONE of the major carriers offer plans that wouldn't be a huge waste of money to me. Even their pre-paid plans are considerably more expensive than Tracfone (I pay about 7 cents per minute, sending or receiving a text counts as 0.3 minutes).
Since Apple is introducing technology in iOS 5 for an SMS-like service among all iPhones and other iOS devices (and iChat, too, IIRC), AT&T's SMS revenue is about to plummet. And that's one of the easiest ways AT&T has to up the dollars per customer metric. (How many people use tethering? Probably very few.) So AT&T sees this, no doubt, as a way to keep their SMS revenues up. Everyone else will see it as a reason to dump SMS altogether and use an IP-based rather than cell-based messaging service. Now if only Apple and Google could agree on interoperable protocols for stuff like this....
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Why is this more outrageous than offering only unlimited internet access, instead of tiered with data caps?
'The vast majority of our messaging customers prefer unlimited plans and with text messaging growth stronger than ever, that number continues to climb among new customers,' says AT&T.
Well, yeah... if their only choices are unlimited or nothing...
If someone has a data plan for $30 that is used to get data from the internet, from your computer via wifi(or tethering)..etc etc....how in the hell is this different than a text message...or better yet i would assume that this is WAY more expensive than sending a measly text message. I want to know how they continually get away with this disregarding the fact that customers have not woken up to this. The FCC, congress someone needs to pry deep to find out why we are paying $30 a month for data then pay $20 a month for a different type of data. Data is data.
You work from AT&T right?
Do you think that companies charge you what things cost to make? Do you think that it costs Fiji Water twice as much as Aquafina to bottle H2O? Newsflash: businesses charge on value, derived from what people are willing to pay, not based on what it costs them to produce such items. In cases of price gouging, competitors come into the market and undercut the original producer. In the case of Mobile Wireless, apparently it's a little bit trickier to upend the market, due to the massive capital infusion it would require to build out a national network.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
It's amazing how people line up in droves to pay for a service that costs the person providing it basically nothing. Sure, the phone and data network cost to implement and maintain. But SMS messages use so little bandwidth, their incremental cost is basically zero. Yet people pay every month for the privilege of using that service. It's pure profit for the phone company.
Now, if the phone companies were to use the text message profits to offset the cost of the phone and data plans, making my service cheaper, I'd be happy to see them charge incredible amounts for the service. But they don't so I'm out of luck. But at least I don't have to pay extra for all of the text messages I don't send.
I think for my first Android software project I'm going to come up with a text message like program that uses your data plan. I could make a killing on something like that if it took off. Although I'll probably get my ass sued off by patent trolls so I may not bother.
Guess what--unlimited SMS costs nothing.
Also, teired data is a far superior model. However, I wish they had a 2G-only teir for email.
The bit that complicates it for me in this case is that this is knowing that I'm paying $20 to piggy-back on packets that are already being sent constantly anyhow. There's no incremental bandwidth usage and no real infrastructure cost associated - charging for texting is close to pure profit.
--- Bwah?
Get Google Voice. It's free... at least for the time being. If Google ever dares charge even a thin dime for them, they'll probably face a mutiny.
The marginal cost of texting is next to nothing. Texts get sent over the control channel. Regardless of texting, the control channel is needed for making calls, and it's mostly wasted bandwidth the rest of the time. Text messaging rates are highway robbery. That they cost anything is a product of our lovely cellular service industry.
But don't worry, once AT&T and T-Mobile merge, they won't waste so much money on redundant overhead, so they'll be able to make texting free with the savings. Right? Right?
Remember that SMS rides on an allocated but otherwise unused slice of spectrum (I forget the details), so this is pure profit for them.
It isn't fundamentally, from a user-experience perspective, for smartphones: in fact, if you have a smartphone, there's any number of apps and services that will let you use the data connection to send and receive text messages for free [including sending to and receiving from people who have only SMS service on their devices], e.g., Google Voice.
Right on. I wish they had 2G only modes for my phone to save on battery. When I'm not browsing or watching video - what do I need 3G (or 4G) for?
It's like that stupid "Flash Mob" AT&T commercial. It's not like 4G actually gets the messages to me faster, the latency is probably about the same. Most importantly, the latency from the vibration of my phone, to me getting my phone out of my pocket, unlocking it, etc. - that latency is significantly longer than anything experienced on 2G or 3G. When my phone is in "passive" mode, it makes perfect sense to not be on 4G (or 3G). I'm way off-topic now.
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
To give a technical answer, in GSM systems (like AT&Ts), text messages go over the voice channel, not the data channel. It's similar to data going over a 56k modem (aka, modulated onto the analog phone line) vs data going over a broadband connection (digital end-to-end).
It doesn't cost ATT or any cell company more for them to pass text messages between phones.. actually it is cheaper for them if you text than making a call. So why do they charge for a service that should be free in the first place? I don't know, but i do know i have had Text BLOCKED on my cell and Internet disabled on my cell. A lot of my tech friends all say, "your an IT professional and you dont have a smart phone" I tell them. I can do it all on my Super Lap Top and i don't mind pulling it out to check the internet or send an email. If you care at all about your bills and having to pay well over $100 for a family plan, then boycott Apple, boycott data usage.. dont use it and they will drop the price.. any one ever hear of Supply and Demand. i mean really now. Unplug for a month, cancel your text and data for a month, lets all see what happens when ATT cant give the upper ups their thousands of dollars bonuses.
Jeez ... I'm tired of reading comments from people who have no clue how the system actually works. If you did, you'd realize how AT&T actually loses money per text.
Here's the breakdown ...
You send a text message which transmits the data in digital format (ones and zeros, to the layman). The message is received in a central building where the message is repeated by flashing lightbulbs. One pulse for zero. Two pulses for one. Workers transcribe the texts then pass them off to their editorial department who double checks the transcription. Then it's passed to another department (whom I'm not at liberty say who or what it does*cough*NSA*cough) before it is passed to the encoding department where workers hand encode the messages into paper rolls that are fed into the central dispatch unit to where it is communicated to your phone.
And you complain that it costs twenty bucks a month? .
exactly. your points are valid. data is data, you already pay up the wahzoo for something that barely works in the first place (darn ATT)
The Google Voice app is capable of sending/receiving messages using your phone's data plan already. If you and the people you message have Google Voice you might be able to reduce the amount of actual SMS messages you use per month. Plus it has other useful features too...
Are iphones really worth all this strife? Just sayin.. if it sucks, put your money into the competition. It's really the only way to change it.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Whenever I get annoyed about how everything is so much cheaper in the US (houses, food, clothes, computers, cable internet, ...) it helps to remember how at least you folks are screwed over on telephones, both fixed and mobile. By cost and service.
- "What, you must pay to *receive* calls!? A phone plan costs *how* much? pay extra for tethering, really?" Ah, schadenfreude.
are you kidding? ATT and Apple are the root of all Evil in the world. I am sure if ATT did get T-mobile you'd be paying more in the long run. less competition of lower prices meas they can charge more with out worry of lossing cutomers.
Don't worry citizen! In unrelated news, the Ministry of Plenty has released a statement that they will be increasing the chocolate ration to 15g tomorrow.
Under the my new plan for texting, each text costs only 1 penny and you don't have to pay that till your conversation with a friend is finished. moreover only the person that sends the second to last text has to pay. As long as you are the last person to send a text withing 15 seconds of the previous one you don't pay!
Texting prices are a total rip off. it costs at&t almost zip to do this, so I figure why not make it as big a scam as humanly possible?
moreover if you have a data plan texting ought to be free.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Until consumers realize how cheap text messages really are, I'm perfectly happy watching other people subsidize my bill while I text away on the Google Voice app. I want to guess this will finally make the app more popular, but the average consumer has been this slow for so long about it, this will be interesting to watch.
After reading this, I decided to go check my ATT account, and I was able to downgrade just fine from the 1500 text plan for $15 to the 1000 text plan for $10. So...if you want it, better go and get it before they update their site. iMessage is about to dramatically lower my billed texts anyway.
sounds like a ATT understructure problem
then why are they charging for the use of text messages when the signals are already being sent out among the towers? I know the answer is greed but how come someone with enough power has not taken care of this problem?
Actually, there is. It's one of the reasons why the iPhone on AT&T nearly took out AT&T's network. Yes, the AT&T network was nearly disabled because the control channel was too busy (there were plenty of voice/data channels to go around).
The bandwidth of the control channel is shared by everyone, and because it's a control channel, everything is coordinated through it. Making a call? The phone asks for two voice channels through the control channel. Ditto for incoming calls - the cells set up a pair of channels and announce the call over the control channel. Ditto to set up and tear down data connections (which can re-use voice channels).
Problem was, the iPhone was VERY aggressive. Maybe too aggressive - it would request a data channel, then tear it down the instant it went idle. This caused excess control channel traffic (but was good for battery life - holding idle data connections open costs battery).
Toss in many iPhone users, many text users, and heavy calling and the control channel can get congested way before capacity. And this leads to slow network data (it can take forever to set up a channel), dropped calls (if the control channel is full, it's hard for the radio to perform handoff), and other issues.
Europe and Asia didn't suffer because texting was so common that carriers migrated to variable-bandwidth control channels - the control channel bandwidth could expand with need.
T-mobile suffered a similar issue with an IM app - I guess the interaction between the IM app and Android's network handling starting causing the same problems.
That's the technical side, anyhow. But the practical side - texts, like gas, are products sold at market rates - what the market will pay, which have little to do with the real cost of providing the service. And people have said they'd pay heavily for texting.
Don't forget that text message costs are exclusively determined by lying to you and constant bullshit experiments in "what the market will bear".
Texting is almost completely free for carriers. The messages piggyback to and from your phone in the spare bandwidth of the tower synchronization signals the phone uses to check reception and select towers for voice/data transmission. The only infinitesimal cost that might exist to the carrier is transmitting 140 lousy bytes from one tower to another tower; the capacity on the towers themselves is free.
Now this might have changed somewhat in recent years; I'm not a communications engineer. But I don't think it has. And I'd bet my life that even if it has, texts still don't cost the carriers more than 0.1 cents.
This is the very picture of evil corporate overlords plotting in a dark tower to see how much money they can squeeze out of you for nothing and avoid advancing technology as long as possible. Real technology entrepreneurs like George Eastman struggled constantly against themselves, trying to make things cheaper and better for the consumer. Eastman in particular tried desperately to obsolete his own products in favor of offering consumers even better, years before the prior product would otherwise have dropped in sales; today we call that cannibalism, and most tech companies struggle like hell to avoid a whit of it. (People acted like Apple was batshit crazy for not better managing their product line when iphones started to cannibalize ipods. Nevermind that iphones cost hundreds more, so even that cannibalism is pure profit.)
When's the last time you saw a company that put out everything they had, every time, and didn't hold something back for upgrade cycles or a magical September festival of worship?
Why would you think that? The guy who posted above me seems to believe that their only cost is wired bandwidth, and that $10/month should cover unlimited data. No, I don't work for AT&T, or any telco.
Their profit margins aren't as big as you think. They may overcharge for texting, but so what? They aren't making some ridiculous amount of money off of everyone like Apple does. If they cut their prices in half (the minimum cut it seems the masses believe is fair), they would go out of business. AT&T's net profit margin (as a company) is generally around 10 to 15% (I don't know what it specifically is for wireless, but it isn't 300%, as the OP seems to believe). They aren't screwing you over as much as you want to believe. Nor are the oil companies. Look at Exxon's profit margins.
well I have verizon and they are CDMA - so are text messages sent differently than data? I have an android incredible 2.
1. I'm on T-Mobile, and if it gets gobbled I can switch.
2. I only send a few texts a month. Hello! A few years ago this didn't even exits. It's not air, water or food. It's texting.
3. Just from the description it sounds like you can chose the $0.20/text option and once again, QUIT TEXTING SO DAMN MUCH.
In other words: tempest. teapot.
Disclosure: I currently own shares in T and VZ, (more precicely, I'll own them when options expire today)
And to add to your answer: in GSM systems, SMS piggy-backs on existing required signaling that is needed for identifying when a cell phone comes into a cell tower's signal reach.
So, how much does it cost a GSM provider to provide SMS service on top of cellular? $0.
They expand the radio capability as they get new subscribers, sure... but that's to handle additional phone calls.
There is no such thing as a separate cost to expand SMS capability.
Messaging is darn near *pure profit* for a telecom company.
Whether I send 0 messages, 10 messages, or 1000 messages... it is opportunistic sending (meaning, if all the channels capable of transmitting that data are currently occupied, then my phone waits until the next round of signaling.) This is why messaging isn't guaranteed to be instantaneous.
Most users assume the other person is a little slower to respond, but that isn't always the case.
My personal hope is that, with this type of revenue/cost disparity, these companies are at least using the extra money to subsidize other services (eg, making phone minutes cheaper because, frankly, those *are* tied directly to equipment/operational costs). ;)
Guess that's part of the "secret formula" for how to be a profitable telecom company.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
ok i downloaded google voice for my android. i have it linked up with my phone number after going through the wizard. However i do not need to use to make calls - i never go over my minutes. i just need to use it to send and receive text messages. i can go to "Labels" and then hit "Text" but i am not sure how to send people text messages or how to make sure i receive them via google voice and not through the VZ service.
Wouldn't you rather just pay for what you use?
Considering that they're charging more for their limited "pay for what you use" plans than for the unlimited ones, no.
Most Android phones do have a way to only use 2G networks, as opposed to 3G.
Maybe AT&T decided that they needed to get more people to buy Blackberries for Blackberry Messenger.
I can't help but feel that moves like this will accelerate the adoption of other messaging systems. AT&T may see a miniscule bottom-line improvement, but they don't even have the iPhone exclusivity to draw in the hipster crowd - now if you "need" an iPhone and use perhaps a few hundred messages a month you'll go to Verizon, and some people will just decide that the iPhone isn't worth the extra hundred dollars (or more) a year.
GroupMe, Beluga/Facebook, improved Twitter clients with DM, IM clients, Google Voice (if they ever come out with an API for SMS, though they lack MMS & some short-code ability), even a rumored porting of BBM to Android/iOS. Over time Android with C2DM should reduce the battery cost of non-SMS messaging clients, and you're left with only "feature-phone" users needing SMS because they don't have data plans. That's a losing bet for AT&T, because the feature-phone users are the ones most likely to be using prepaid phones instead of contracts.
fencepost
just a little off
I guarantee you it doesn't. At least it wouldn't if they actually kept up with their infrastructure.
I don't know if it's standard for Android, but Cyanogenmod definitely has a 2G only mode in the radio settings.
i went to the help in the google voice app and it says that if i want to send a txt i have to go to the inbox then press the menu key then press "Compose" but that option doesn't come up in the menu options. All i have is Refresh, Labels, Balance, Search, Settings and Help. Anyone got any pointers?
It's actually worse than "paying for 140 bytes." That 140 bytes is part of normal service packets that go to and from your phone. So whether there is a message in there for the user or from the user is simply irrelevant in terms of usage. Charging for SMS at all is a fraud.
They charge $0.20US per INCOMING OR OUTGOING TEXT if you dont have a package. They intentionally price it to "encourage" you to do what is best and buy a plan.
They are knowingly ripping everyone off. and laughing while petting their evil lap cat....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Whoosh.
(I'm hoping so - either than or I'm going to lose all hope for humanity)
Atleast in India, though Mobile tech is somewhat behind US tech, all we pay for sending a SMS is either Rs 50/month for 500msgs/day , or Rs 6 per month, with unlimited messages @ Rs 0.01/msg
Rs 45 is approx $1
How come rates arent cheaper there (considering that a higher no. of people would be using the phones anyways)
An SMS message has a maximum of 120 characters, which is packed into 140 bytes. $10 per 1000 messages works out to 1 cent per message, or 1 cent per 140 bytes. That gives us 7.31 cents per kilobyte, or 73.1 dollars per megabyte. Of course it's actually a lot higher, since you don't always send exactly 160 characters per message. If the average message is only half the maximum length, we get a whopping 146.2 dollars per meg. I don't know how many texts people send a month on average, but if it's less than 2000 the new plan is no better.
So I guess SMS is still on par with the cost of communicating with the Hubble space telescope: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/14/txts_r_v_pricey/
When a company is charging 10,000,000 Percent more for something than they evidently need to, I would say that's an indication that the free market, competition, and or consumers are failing miserably, and some type of legislative action is needed to correct it.
"The market will bear it" seems like a pretty shitty justification to allow such excesses to continue. The market is creating monsters here. Excessive profits aren't leading to more jobs, they're leading to buying off the government, which leads to less competition, leading to more excessive profits, a feedback loop. I don't see how this ends well for the rest of us if we don't stop it. "The new Iphone 27! $5999! The difference between it and the Iphone 26 is that the iphone 26, released three months ago, is not going to work when we upgrade our network to 47932G technology!"
Thanks for the tip - now the real question - do you actually use that setting ever or am I a crazy person?
Disagreeing with me does not mean you get to mod me troll.
maybe people are willing to pay for it because they are not or they think there isn't another option(which there is if you have a smartphone).
Their release about how customers want unlimited plans (irony there, considering their bandwidth throttling) is all roses for now, but once folks are converted over, I don't expect the "unlimited" wording to stay around long. At some point soon after, releases will come out about how abusers of the system are using more than their fair share of texts so they will redefine their unlimited plan to be good for up to, say, 1000 messages a month. Yay - twice the profit! The cycle of "Customers want unlimited! The sky is falling; customers are using what we sold them!" is completely predictable at this point.
Wish I had mod points.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
I am on vanilla Froyo and it does allow you to set it to "2G only"
No sig for the moment.
It's ok - this is the kind of treatment that recently initiated my move to Virgin Mobile for less than half what I was paying before and receiving exponentially more.
Unfortunately, they are about to be owned by AT&T. As a T-Mobile customer, I likely won't be renewing my next contract.
I use it all the time if I am in a place with spotty 3G and I need the battery to last. I have it right in my power bar that I see when I drag the status bar down.
1,000 texts is 'unlimited' for most people so they're removing the cheaper plan that goes ignored.
Just text AT&T with your input at .... Oh crap. Went over my limit with that one.
Have gnu, will travel.
Second!
FTFY
So in terms of sandwiches, they're charging just over cost for meat, but 1000% markup for plain white bread. Still not a good way to sustain a business.
If AT&T's texting wasn't so butt-rapingly expensive, iPhones wouldn't have about 100 free texting applications. I used TextFree for a while (and still have it on the kids' iPods). Twitter replaced texting for a lot of my friends. Most recently I've started using Google Plus "huddles" for several people.
I'm on Verizon but benefit from AT&T's shortsightedness. Thanks, Ma Bell, for getting developers to come up with a bunch of solutions that work better (for free!) than your crappy service. I know that a lot of people don't have smartphones yet, but that problem will fix itself over time.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
If you run a company that only makes a minimal profit margin while charging a price that the consumers find grossly overpriced then I think you need to deeply examine your infrastructure. It really is sad that enough people go along with it to keep this sort of broken business model alive. Makes me happy that I'm a prepaid user that only feeds these fools about $20 a year.
Cool post bro, highfive \o
The market will squeeze this out. People will start using alternatives to txt msgs or they will migrate to other carriers.
I'm locked in with the $5/200msg plan; but if they force the $20/unlimited plan on me; I'm turning off txt msgs on my iPhone.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
There have been numerous studies that prove the cost to send texts between networks is negligible at best. Significantly lower than the 10 cents per text that at&t was charging, or the 20 cents a minute they want to charge. It hasn't gotten more expensive to carry the traffic, in essence with the march of technology it has gotten LESS expensive over time. Basically texting takes advantage of the pre existing data channel. It was there when cell phones first started, and is still there in one form or another today. And we have paid for it over and over again.
It all depends upon your usage patterns. If you do not desire text and have low usage, there is no "plan" that suits your needs. A simple, double minutesTracfone can be purchased for $10, and 1000 minutes can be purchased for $100. If you want to spend $150, you can get 3000 minutes. You have a year to use them. Good luck finding any "plan" that offers minimal service for less than $10 per month. Back in the early days of cell phones, they used to have minimum minute plans, but carriers want that big monthly payment these days.
I know two people right now that go that route and are tickled to not have to pay the $40 per month for the minimum bare bones plan the big carriers offer.
How much do you think it costs to run those towers?
I admit this is offtopic, but I recently tried to activate a nexus s with ATT which I bought off ebay. It's my first smartphone, and in my excitement I simply assumed that a pay-as-ou-go data plan would be available (I really only need the phone and wifi). To my disappointment, Att REQUIRES a $15/mo minimum data plan to activate the phone. They refuse to activate the voice and text capabilities only.
I looked around at other carriers and slowly realized that this is standard industry practice. I of course am seriously pissed. Does anyone on slashdot have a similar experience, and have any solution been found?
But don't worry, once AT&T and T-Mobile merge, they won't waste so much money on redundant overhead, so they'll be able to make texting free with the savings. Right? Right?
I seem to remember a document being leaked by a lawyer working for AT&T that pretty much exposed that they were only buying T-mobile to reduce competition. So if that gets out I have my hopes that the merger won't be allowed to happen.
I think this is about subscriber retention and the upcoming iPhone 5. "Oh no, I can't switch. If I need to switch back, I'll lose unlimited data, sane SMS, ..." What do you want to bet this policy is revised sometime in the winter?
Because the people that do have the power to stop this royal screwing of the consumer can't. They are already owned by AT&T.
I have a shortcut on one of my homescreens that can toggle it, but admittedly I don't use it that often. I have heard of people using things like Tasker to automatically schedule the phone to go to 2G overnight, while they're sleeping, and then going back to whatever they have in the morning.
Would you like to be shot, or tortured and shot?
Um... shot?
I was a customer service rep for a US cellular company and a number of times I had similar calls from irate parents.
"Why is my bill that high? There is no way by daughter could have sent those messages. She was in school at the time. Some are being sent at 2AM. She was asleep."
When shown evidence that the numbers texted to were common on her phone and a suggestion made that they talk to the daughter they never call back. Unlimited plans are there to eliminate the overages and subsequent CS calls cause by users who do not pay the bills over using their device and don't keep track of their usage.
Sure it's universally accepted on all phones but so is email now. Seriously who really needs to text when they have email? How many people out there have phones without a data plan that need to text?
The slick thing for a cell company to do would be to merge with an internet broadband company. Each cable modem or optical terminal could then become a mini cell transceiver on the carriers allotted frequencies. Maybe require external antennas. The customers also then pay the power bill. Great for congested cities, apartment, and office buildings. A semi mesh network controlled and configured by the phone company.
So $100 for everything. And most likely the person with the cell phone is only going to connect wirelessly to an extended range WiFi type device.
Fuck you and the text plan you rode in on. Not that any of the other carriers are better. Texts are folded into a header that is pure overhead on voice data. They pay for it whether you use it or not, just to transmit voice. So you're paying for nothing from all of them.