Facebook Is Killing Text Messaging

An anonymous reader writes "We've heard many times and from multiple sources that text messaging is declining. There are multiple reasons for this (BlackBerry Messenger, Apple's iMessage, and even WhatsApp), but the biggest one is Facebook (Messenger). Facebook is slowly but surely killing the text message. As a result, the social networking giant is eating into the traffic carriers receive from text messaging, and thus a huge chunk of their revenues."

Comments

Good

[dontbgay]

Maybe carriers would reduce their crazy pricing models for SMS messages!

Re:Good

[olsmeister]

Well, it's hard to compete with free. But (if I were in the carriers' position) I would stress the privacy/advertising/data mining issues, and try to appeal to people who have no facebook account an no interest in getting one. And lower the prices ... I think the gravy train for them is nearing the end for SMS messages. So at least facebook is a positive in that regard. Anyway, wouldn't Twitter be more along the lines of direct competition?

Re:Good

[GuldKalle]

A thought occurs: If the prices of sms were extremely cheap (about $ 0.001), would the increased sms usage eat into voice usage to the point where some of the US capacity issues disappeared?

Re:Good

[aliquis]

Yeah. Because no-one listen to your SMS messages ...

Re:Good

[jellomizer]

But that's ok you are being mined other ways. Well you can compete with free, if you couldn't then how did Apple rise from near bankruptcy. When you had Linux growing, during that same time. I would argue we never really had privacy. Back in the pre-internet age if you were to go to the store and buy embarrassing products, the clerk could have been the town gossip, and by the end of the week you are an outcast because of some odd purchase. While now we are collecting more information, the advertisers are smart enough not to abuse the information, because if you make Jane embarrassed because she bought a product or has an issue which a product can help, you risk loosing a customer.

Re:Good

[Sancho]

In the US, don't most People who text usually get an unlimited plan?

Re:Good

[shentino]

Quite right.

Facebook isn't killing text messaging, it's just giving carriers an excuse to.

See also who kills people, guns or other people.

Answer: people, the gun is just something they use to shoot with and without a gun they'd just use a knife instead.

Re:Good

[Hadlock]

Yes, but I think a lot of people are still stuck on legacy family plans from 2004 or so, so they're paying per message still. Unlimited text messaging has been $5/mo for about 6 years now, and in the last 4 years most single user/phone plans that have data also have unlimited SMS. To buy a new phone on a new plan these days, you'd almost have to go out of your way to pay-per-SMS unless you're a cheap bastard trying to avoid paying carrier's SMS tax.
 
My roommate (who can well afford it) is trying to avoid the SMS tax on his pay as you go phone, so I have to email him if I want a timely response, and hope he's near a computer. It's really annoying if I want to see if we're low on dishwashing detergent or whatever.

Re:Good

[EggyToast]

I believe that is the point -- people are choosing to use other forms of messaging and finding that they're as good, if not better, among their contacts compared to SMS. As such, they are saving themselves the unlimited texting fees.

An unlimited texting plan on AT&T is $20/mo, and on Verizon, the $5/mo tier only gets you 250 messages. The $10/mo plan gets you mostly unlimited texting. So, people are deciding "hey, everyone I text is on FB, and I can ping them on their phone the same way. Plus I can ping people who don't even have phones and are sitting at home."

So, it's more flexible, and it's cheaper. People then drop their unlimited data plans (which are add-ons and not part of the contract structure), which eats into the planned revenue for the carriers. What's worse, the carriers have no plan to recoup this fee once it's gone. They'll need to make up the shortfall by increasing data plan costs.

Re:Good

[allo]

no, its not. sms are nearly free for carriers, as they consume very little ressources in the network. They just make very much profit of them. So they could offer them for free and make profit only with calls / with contract fees.

Re:Good

[nurb432]

its an excuse to raise prices. Its scam. I don't see a decrease with all the people i know, and its increasing if anything.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple rose from near-bankruptcy because they had a good product, while Linux was still pretty shitty as a user experience.

Oh, and Steve Jobs sold his soul to the Devil, which is why he died so young.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

A thought occurs: If the prices of sms were extremely cheap (about $ 0.001), would the increased sms usage eat into voice usage to the point where some of the US capacity issues disappeared?

In terms of wireless, over-the-air bandwidth, yes to a certain degree. In terms of broader "network" bandwidth, no. Phone signalling is a wholly dedicated system, and it's really not that costly in terms of bandwidth- latency is what is usually the primary item of concern with voice. Now, that's not to be confused with VOIP services like Skype which rely on general internet connectivity instead of dedicated trunking between carriers.

But most people are already on unlimited SMS plans here, so I doubt we'd really see much movement at all.

Re:Good

[Stormin]

The rates carriers charge for SMS just shows how much strong, strong regulation is needed. If I were in charge, I would mandate that each carrier send a letter to every former and current customer who had pad an SMS fee, stating that the SMS fee represented price gouging because the SMS messages don't actually cost the carrier anything, as well as illegal monopolistic practices, since all the carriers colluded to raises these prices. I would then mandate that each carrier refund any and all SMS fees paid, with the amounts to be multiplied by a factor of 3 as a form of punative relief. I would further change the regulations such that if the carrier ever wanted to apply for spectrum licenses again, they'd need to multiply by a factor of 100 instead of 3.

Of course this would put the carriers out of business, but someone could buy the spectrum and infrastructure in bankruptcy court, and hopefully they'd learn a lesson.

Re:Good

[0100010001010011]

You mean like when Target told a dad his daughter was pregnant?

Also, you loose nothing. If something is loose you should tighten it as not to lose it. Although I guess in this case you sort of did lose a loose customer.

Re:Good

[realityimpaired]

An unlimited texting plan on AT&T is $20/mo, and on Verizon, the $5/mo tier only gets you 250 messages. The $10/mo plan gets you mostly unlimited texting. So, people are deciding "hey, everyone I text is on FB, and I can ping them on their phone the same way. Plus I can ping people who don't even have phones and are sitting at home."

Depends on the carrier, I suppose. There are some US carriers (think Boost, for example) who offer unlimited texting included in the base package.

In the rest of the world, it's almost a given that your texting will be that low. I pay $5/mo for unlimited international texting on my plan. And I have European friends who think that I'm being gouged at that rate.

Re:Good

[Dodgy G33za]

Blimey. You really have given this some thought. If I were in charge I can think of a hellava lot of things to do before I got to SMS's.

I think I might start with Lawyers...

Re:Good

[gstrickler]

$5/mo for unlimited texting? Not from Verizon, AT&T, Sprint or T-Mobile. It's a $20/mo add-on from VZ, AT&T and Sprint, or a $10/mo higher plan from T-Mobile.

Re:Good

[Sporkinum]

Your roomate sounds smart. Since they charge you for inbound texts, that makes sense. Paygo is way better than contract if you use your phone as a phone and dont have diarrhea of the mouth. The paygo I am on is 5/minute, 2/text, 10/mb. Your $5 example would be 250 texts.

Re:Good

[oztiks]

Carriers are a dying business model. It's no coincidence that Skype on iPhone was clipped to ensure it didn't operate on 3G. It's merely a matter of time before the carrier model either changes or gets pushed out and with microsofts acquisition of Skype I'd imagine within a few years all that carriers would charge for is data usage. All hail 4g!!!

Re:Good

[hawguy]

The rates carriers charge for SMS just shows how much strong, strong regulation is needed. If I were in charge, I would mandate that each carrier send a letter to every former and current customer who had pad an SMS fee, stating that the SMS fee represented price gouging because the SMS messages don't actually cost the carrier anything, as well as illegal monopolistic practices, since all the carriers colluded to raises these prices. I would then mandate that each carrier refund any and all SMS fees paid, with the amounts to be multiplied by a factor of 3 as a form of punative relief. I would further change the regulations such that if the carrier ever wanted to apply for spectrum licenses again, they'd need to multiply by a factor of 100 instead of 3.

Of course this would put the carriers out of business, but someone could buy the spectrum and infrastructure in bankruptcy court, and hopefully they'd learn a lesson.

SMS's are only "free" to the carriers in the same way that voice calls are "free" - once they've built the infrastructure, there's no incremental cost to send SMS's (or make a voice call), until the volume exceeds the capacity of the switch.

It doesn't matter if plain text SMS's ride in a control channel that would be there anyway - that control channel wouldn't be there unless the carrier put up a tower, paid for spectrum, etc. And they need to ship those SMS's to the customer who could be anywhere in the country, so that requires additional back end data infrastructure and a database to store and route SMS's. And since users expect to be able to send SMS's to people on other carriers, the carriers have to maintain SMS gateways to exchange messages. No service is perfect, so they will need to support it with customer service reps so when your grandma can't figure out how to reply to your text, she can call the carrier for help. And then there's MMS's (i.e. photo messages, sometimes messages over 160 characters in length).... these do require a data channel on both the sending and receiving end (and additional server infrastructure).

I agree that SMS's are way over priced, but you can't say that they don't cost the carriers anything. And how would you set a "reasonable" SMS fee? McDonalds sells a few cents of sugar-syrup, water, and ice in a cup for $1.29 - is that price gouging? When I go to the ball park, the same Coke costs $3.50. is that price gouging? Should all companies be forced to charge their base cost plus a reasonable markup for profit for all goods and services?

Re:Good

[realityimpaired]

Answer: people, the gun is just something they use to shoot with and without a gun they'd just use a knife instead.

Actually, that's a false analogy. Not because of the "people kill people" thing, but the "they'd just use a knife instead". There's a very large degree of separation between using a knife (which is a very visceral tool, and requires an investment from its user) and using a gun (which is essentially point and click, and can be done from hundreds of feet away with the right weapon).

There is a reason that murder rates are lower in countries with gun control, and it's not because people are less violent. It's because it's harder to actually *kill* somebody with a knife or a baseball bat, and most people aren't able to actually complete the task.

Re:Good

[shentino]

You miss the point that the proximate cause of killing is a desire to slay, not merely the availability of the tool to do so.

Re:Good

[blackest_k]

This paying to receive messages and calls is the problem, not your room mate.

Here we don't pay to recieve calls or texts and 3000 texts, free skype , free weekend calls and unlimited Internet access for 30 days is mine when i top up by 20 euro usually every 30 days or longer. I also get an extra 10 euro credit a month and 3000 any time minutes to my providers network I bought my phone from them but sim and contract free for 100 euro , currently the same model is 60 euro. I have no phone insurance to buy since replacing the phone is no hassle at these prices.
Android 2.2 is fine for me and there is a 7.2 meg modem built in which I can tether my wifi android tablet or my laptop to.

So maybe you shouldn't be annoyed with your room mate being unwillling to pay to check if you need wash powder or not. You could just make a shopping list before you go to the shops, it is really handy and avoids the annoyance of coming home without razors and shaving with a blunt blade the next morning for example because you forgot.

You also do not help yourself by opting for a contract, because at some point you will be stuck with an oversize bill due to going over some allowance at the end of your billing period. That also happens here too, although never to a pay as you go customer. Also they also stiff you on some phone calls because they are lo-call or free-phone non geographic numbers so don't count as your paid for minutes. Extremely annoying to find your phone bill twice your contracted rate with hours of free calls unused.

If your happy to have your mobile provider rob you each month under the guise of contractual liability then fine do as you do but if enough people can change provider as they feel like then the phone company will have to start playing nicely. Number portability is a matter of law here as is unlocking handsets although they can charge an admin fee but not an unlocking fee...

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Listening != data mining

Re:Good

[Time_Ngler]

Tell him to sign up for Google Voice. It'll convert SMS to email and its free. He can also send SMS for free, too, then.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't legally own a gun then you aren't free.

Re:Good

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Listening != data mining

You're right. Listening is worse.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a reason that murder rates are lower in countries with gun control

Really? Where are those data?

Because in the US multiple efforts at gun control have done nothing to impact homicide rates involving firearms. Not the NFA in 1934, not the FFA in 38, not the CGA in 68, not the creation of the ATF, neither the Brady bill nor the 1994 Crime Bill. Looking at correlation in the other direction, what scant major court decision there are that have upheld more progressive readings of the 2nd Amendement, have not caused an upward swing in the statistics either. Didn't see it when SCOTUS said firearms needed military applications to qualify. Didn't see it when the AWB section of the above 1994 Crime Bill expired. Didn't see it when the DC handgun ban was repealed.

Indeed, in the US we see quite direct evidence that areas with more gun control have more instances of crime involving guns. I don't agree with most of the causality arguments advanced by firearms rights progressives, but the evidence certainly refutes any attempt to claim more laws mean less crime.

Firearms rights vary all over Africa. Nearly never in ways that support your claims. Owning a legal firearm in SA is a process frought with bribes and open ended timelines and murky bureaucratic processes. Yet guns in the hands of criminals abound and they use them often. Most other countries vary from the same situation to outright bans, yet have similar statistics.

Re:Good

[pak9rabid]

Nope...carriers will just raise the price of data to make lost revenue back (see: the end of unlimited data plans)

Re:Good

[wealthychef]

Actually, the article you quote makes jellomizer's point.

But Target didn't stop the creepy target marketing -- it just got sneakier about it.

"With the pregnancy products, though, we learned that some women react badly," the executive said. "Then we started mixing in all these ads for things we knew pregnant women would never buy, so the baby ads looked random. We'd put an ad for a lawn mower next to diapers. We'd put a coupon for wineglasses next to infant clothes. That way, it looked like all the products were chosen by chance.

"And we found out that as long as a pregnant woman thinks she hasn't been spied on, she'll use the coupons. She just assumes that everyone else on her block got the same mailer for diapers and cribs. As long as we don't spook her, it works."

The author of the article says it's creepy, but actually I think it's clever and discreet.

Re:Good

[realityimpaired]

Really? Where are those data?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#2010s

Are you being intentionally oblivious?

The murder rate in the USA is more than 3x as high as Canada, 4x as high as the UK or Australia, and even more than that for most of Europe. The numbers from Japan included attempted (unsuccessful murders), and the rate in the US is still 5x as high as it is there.

Russia is the only G8 country with a higher murder rate than the US, and there's no gun control there, either. Of the other 6 countries in the G8, all of them have gun control.

Because in the US multiple efforts at gun control have done nothing to impact homicide rates involving firearms. Not the NFA in 1934, not the FFA in 38, not the CGA in 68, not the creation of the ATF, neither the Brady bill nor the 1994 Crime Bill. Looking at correlation in the other direction, what scant major court decision there are that have upheld more progressive readings of the 2nd Amendement, have not caused an upward swing in the statistics either. Didn't see it when SCOTUS said firearms needed military applications to qualify. Didn't see it when the AWB section of the above 1994 Crime Bill expired. Didn't see it when the DC handgun ban was repealed.

Once the weapons are in peoples' hands, controlling who can buy them doesn't really do a lot of good, now, does it? They're already out there. No phrase in human history has been more misinterpreted than "the right to keep and bear arms", btw.

That still has nothing to do with my point, which was quite plainly that it takes a more vested effort to kill somebody with a knife than it does a gun. With a knife you have to really mean it. With a gun, you can point and click, and the person is dead before you've really realized what's happening. How is this lost on you?

Re:Good

[shiftless]

Exactly. The bothersome aspect of invasive advertisement is that it's invasive. If it's subtle and discreet......and my private information isn't being misused.....who really cares?

Re:Good

[shiftless]

My roommate (who can well afford it) is trying to avoid the SMS tax on his pay as you go phone, [....] It's really annoying

Your roommate can "well afford it" exactly because he realizes he can't afford it.

Re:Good

[Sancho]

Yes, but I think a lot of people are still stuck on legacy family plans from 2004 or so, so they're paying per message still.

I think they'll let you tack on SMS to existing plans. In fact, I can add, drop, or modify an SMS plan on my phone (Verizon) without signing a new contract.

My roommate (who can well afford it) is trying to avoid the SMS tax on his pay as you go phone, so I have to email him if I want a timely response, and hope he's near a computer. It's really annoying if I want to see if we're low on dishwashing detergent or whatever.

I use about 40 minutes per month, so maybe I'm not one to talk, but why can't you just call him?

Re:Good

[shadowrat]

Maybe carriers would reduce their crazy pricing models for SMS messages!

Then they will just raise the prices of the stuff that i do use.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't legally drive through red lights then you aren't free.

Re:Good

[Sancho]

No, that's not the point. The person to whom I replied said

A thought occurs: If the prices of sms were extremely cheap (about $ 0.001), would the increased sms usage eat into voice usage to the point where some of the US capacity issues disappeared?

The point is that lots of people get unlimited text plans, which brings the cost per message to even less than the GP's suggestion (from $0.0001 to $0.00) and it hasn't alleviated the capacity issues.

These days, most people who want to text get unlimited plans, and everyone else prefers talking (and I guess some use Facebook, BBM, or iMessages.) I happen to prefer some form of messaging, but I know plenty of people who prefer talking--even a few who outright block SMS.

Re:Good

[LihTox]

Some of us aren't stuck on anything; I have a pay-as-you-go T-Mobile plan, pay about $100 a year for the relatively few calls I make. Texts are $0.10 per I think, so I certainly don't use texts the way I might use some sort of instant messenger service.

I'm not claiming to be the norm by any means, but I do exist. :D

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for being an idiot. Even people like you with a complete lack of perspective, subtlety or degree are necessary to make the world go 'round.

Re:Good

[wealthychef]

The more I look at this, the more confused I am at what Target supposedly did wrong. The OP claimed "Target told a man his daughter was pregnant." Um, no, Target sent the man's daughter mail, which he opened and found coupons for. If there was any invasion of privacy, it was the man reading his daughter's mail. I would argue a father has the right to do so, precisely in order to find out these kind of things, since the father is probably going to end up helping to raise this baby at least financially and probably more so, but that's not my call. The point is, target sent private mail to the girl and it was intercepted. Even if it was a big postcard that says "congratulations on your teenage pregnancy," I would think they did nothing wrong.

Re:Good

[grumbel]

If people should be allowed to own guns, then countries should be allowed to own nukes. Why are we angry at Iran again?

Re:Good

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The bothersome aspect of invasive advertisement is that it's invasive. If it's subtle and discreet......and my private information isn't being misused.....who really cares?

Uh, no. That problem is not that it is "invasive" - the "invasive" part is just what tips people off to the fact that they are being stalked by Big Data. It is the stalking part that creeps people out.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Your premise is wrong.

Re:Good

[realityimpaired]

You miss the point that the proximate cause of killing is a desire to slay, not merely the availability of the tool to do so.

You miss my point, which was that the likelihood of successfully killing somebody is much greater with a weapon like a firearm than it is with a knife, because with a gun you can point, click, and the person's dead before your brain has really wrapped itself around the idea that you're killing somebody. With a knife, it requires much more physical force, and takes more time in general... those two combine to make it a much more visceral experience, and one which will take long enough for your brain to figure out what's happening. Most people don't have the stomach to actually kill somebody in a manner like that, which is why the murder rate is lower in areas where gun control exists, even if the attempted murder rate is about the same.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Russia is the only G8 country with a higher murder rate than the US, and there's no gun control there, either.

Russia actually has the most ridiculous gun control laws, dating back to the Soviet times. It's such a hassle to get a gun license there that people constantly come up with "traumatic guns" or "gas guns" or other such nonsense.

Unless of course you've been watching too much "FPS Russia" on youtube and believe he is actually a Russian.

Re:Good

[preaction]

No. The reason SMS is limited in size is because it fits in some empty space between voice packets. In other words, SMS is essentially free (it piggybacks on the internal signalling interface when the signalling isn't being used, so it's making use of otherwise dead air).

Re:Good

[quacking duck]

No phrase in human history has been more misinterpreted than "the right to keep and bear arms", btw.

Agree with the rest of your post, but not this.

The most mis-interpreted phrases in human history are any where people preface with "The Bible says..." or "The Koran says..." Using the 2nd Amendment of the USA to suit various agendas is nothing compared to that.

Re:Good

[cgenman]

Being way too damned expensive is killing text messaging. 10c a message? Texting was originally given away free, as it was largely unused portions of the cell phone system. If they were charging normal data rates for texting, it would cost 5 hundredths of a hundredth of a cent. Users are being GOUGED, and we know it.

It's amazing that phone companies' entire business model in the US has been based around pissing their clients off. Ridiculous Russian Roulette overage fees. Lock-in contracts even if you don't use their phones. Refusing to unlock phones. Insane roaming. Now insane data roaming & texting fees. And then they're surprised when their clients find other places to do business. I'm surprised more of them haven't been burned to the ground at the end of pitchforks.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Russia is the only G8 country with a higher murder rate than the US, and there's no gun control there, either

You couldn't be any more wrong. For normal peasants, and mere mortals, civilian-owned firearms in Russia are tightly regulated, and handguns are basically unheard of. Revolvers must only be able to fire rubber bullets. Of course, like all gun-control schemes, it does nothing to prevent criminals from getting them.

If you're a billionaire, however, Spetsnaz soldiers might illegally gift you real, fully automatic AK-47s that you can flaunt to the world on a widely watched US news program, and you might even be able to install one of these on your multi-multi-million dollar yacht.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

"they are being stalked by Big Data. It is the stalking part that creeps people out." As soon as I saw this I thought it must be you. Only you can post with that kind of pathetic overreaction, calling everything you don't care for "Big _____" as though anyone other than you thinks idiotic hyperbole makes a point. By the way, how much is Big Stupidity paying you to troll for them?

Re:Good

[petsounds]

I agree that SMS's are way over priced, but you can't say that they don't cost the carriers anything. And how would you set a "reasonable" SMS fee? McDonalds sells a few cents of sugar-syrup, water, and ice in a cup for $1.29 - is that price gouging? When I go to the ball park, the same Coke costs $3.50. is that price gouging? Should all companies be forced to charge their base cost plus a reasonable markup for profit for all goods and services?

The problem is the the U.S. telcos imagine themselves as one-stop shops, and do everything they can to monopolize services and content. They should really only be selling their connection. SMS is just another data service that should be handled by a third-party. Imagine if you local DSL or cable ISP charged you to use AIM or MSN! And I can only go so far with the infrastructure argument. The telcos built their empires on the backs of taxpayers via Federal handouts.

Unfortunately the service companies have proprietary messaging services (iMessage, Blackberry messaging), so SMS is still the only universal messaging system. Sometimes a free market system works against the common good, and this is one of those cases.

Re:Good

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

"they are being stalked by Big Data. It is the stalking part that creeps people out." As soon as I saw this I thought it must be you. Only you can post with that kind of pathetic overreaction, calling everything you don't care for "Big _____" as though anyone other than you thinks idiotic hyperbole makes a point. By the way, how much is Big Stupidity paying you to troll for them?

Hey Big Man!

Re:Good

[dgatwood]

I keep hearing people say that SMS messages are effectively free for the carriers, but such statements don't present the whole picture, and as a result, are highly misleading.

Yes, text messages are sent using junk parts of packets that aren't used for anything else. However, there are a limited number of time slots per frequency, and a limited number of frequency slots. Therefore, it is a scarce resource. If text messages were free or nearly so, there is the danger that your text messages would be delayed by hours because of the backlog, making them early useless.

When a backlog does occur, there are only three ways to fix it: add more bandwidth (which costs money), change phones so that they can deliver text messages using data traffic (which effectively takes bandwidth from other things, eventually resulting in the need to add bandwidth, which costs money), or charge a fee so that fewer people send text messages, thus avoiding the tragedy of the commons.

So it is no more "nearly free" than biodiesel made from restaurant grease is nearly free; initially it may seem that way, but as soon as demand builds up, suddenly there's not enough to go around, and the cost of increasing the supply makes it largely infeasible to do so.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I see the truth hurts you. Cry more now.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You at least have an appropriately chosen name. You are definitely reality impaired. Guns that are "point and click, and the person is dead before you've really realized what's happening" are bulky and notable and so infrequently used in homicide. Once you're prepared to go to that length, gun control isn't an issue. There are hundreds of ways to kill if you're willing to be overt beforehand. For hand guns, the effort required to kill is more than a knife. Shit, knives are "stab and the person is dead before you've really realized what's happening"! .... wait. You mean, I need to stab somewhere vital?! Well that is most strange. It is almost like a bullet has to hit somewhere vital, too. But no, you're right.. hand guns don't have a short sight radius, don't need stable grips, good breath control, or good fine motor control. Oh. No. They totally fucking do. Maybe you should learn something about them guns that didn't come from movies.

Distances where some dumbass who knows nothing about guns can kill with one resemble distances where dumbasses who know nothing about knives can kill with one of those.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Very apt username... for ya. ;P

U crazy

Re:Good

[Skillet5151]

Intentional homicide numbers include those committed in justified self defense.

Re:Good

[AndrewX]

The murder rate has very little to do with the people's ability to get guns in their hands. Right now, we are close to the all time low national murder rate in the US ( http://thepublicintellectual.org/2011/05/02/a-crime-puzzle/ ), while legal firearm ownership, or at least attempted firearm ownership, has increased ( http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/2010-operations-report/2010-operations-report-pdf ).

Also missing from your analysis is that by far most homicides involving firearms are done so with *illegally* obtained firearms, which would still exist even if they were banned. Additionally, while 67% of homicides are committed using firearms ( http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_09.html ), what isn't measurable is how many of them would have occurred with or without a gun.

And also, the national rate is influenced largely by a few larger cities. Homicide by firearm in California is very high compared to most states, and they have some of the strictest gun laws in the country. While in Washington or Idaho, it's closer to the opposite. Homicide rates are influenced more by things like prohibition, wars, etc.

Re:Good

[fratermus]

There is sufficient room between free and the $0.10/ea price that is commonly seen in the wild.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Russia has gun control... unless you're a mobster.

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20050811/41139012.html

Re:Good

[shutdown -p now]

With a gun, you can point and click, and the person is dead before you've really realized what's happening.

Unless it's a shotgun, if you "point and click", you're likely to wound and incapacitate a person, but not kill them. The idea that people drop dead as soon as a small piece of lead comes in contact with them is BS that mostly stems from the movies. In reality, unless you shoot them in the head (and sometimes not even then), it takes several bullets to kill a person, and even then it's not a certainty.

Re:Good

[interkin3tic]

As someone who never really used text messages anyway, I'm worried what NEW crazy pricing schemes they'll come up with.

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[tangelogee]

Because nobody (especially the oh-so-trustworthy phone companies) is snooping on your texts now.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

A knife is a little more 'personal' as it involves violating the personal space of the target whereas a gun does not need to although for accuracy sake a gun could be used at zero range anyways.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

If SMS were truly universal I would have an SMS client for my computer.

No, I don't have a stupid cellphone because the last thing I want is for people to assume they can disrupt whatever I do, everywhere I go.

Re:Good

[torkus]

You have a valid point - to a limited degree.

I use SMS heavily at times. Multiple conversations, outage reports, server health monitoring, etc. and I can use several hundered a day easily. Even if each ~160 character message takes 50 times more bandwidth as data traffic than it's actual size and I'm looking at a few MB for the day. Yet if I paid individually they'd charge me ~$50 or more.

So yes, it's possible carriers have had to expand or change how they handle SMS to manage the increased number sent, but the overall impact on their available bandwidth is negligable - especially compared to the cost.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Something was loose alright.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Where does it say that the father "opened" the mail? It sounds more like it was just a set of openly visible coupons.

If the father did have to open something and did it without his daughter's permission, well, guess what? He just committed a federal crime.

Re:Good

[AndrewX]

Also based on the homicide rate chart from Wikipedia that you hold in such high regard:

Czech Republic: very liberal gun laws, 1/3 the homicide rate of the US

Germany: only requires you be 18 and fill out an application. 1/5 the homicide rate of the US.

Italy: fairly painless to obtain a pistol, and one can apply for a concealed permit. 1/5 the homicide rate of the US.

Japan: Licensing is little more than a formality, strict gun laws are not enforced. It's very easy to get guns. Also, one of the lowest homicide rates in the world.

Mexico: has extremely strict gun laws that are heavily enforced, yet the murder rate is almost 4x that of the US! Hmm... Interesting, eh?

Honduras: tops off your coveted list with the highest homicide rate in the world being 18X higher than here in the US, and the laws are substantially more restrictive (can own at most 5, assault weapons banned, etc)...

We could go on and on, but the evidence to support your claims is not there. Period. There is no causality between firearm availability and homicide rates.

Re:Good

[wealthychef]

It sounds more like it was just a set of openly visible coupons.

I assumed it was in an envelope, because when a single retailer sends targeted ads to a person by name, as opposed to bundling with other retailers as part of a super cheap "to resident" kind of thing, it's always in an envelope. The article did not say but I think my theory is more reasonable. When was the last time you saw a set of openly visible targeted coupons from a retailer addressed to you by name?

If the father did have to open something and did it without his daughter's permission, well, guess what? He just committed a federal crime.

You didn't give me a chance to guess.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as i don't like facebook it is always good to see carries eat a bullet.

Re:Good

[swb]

I think a better argument is that while the spectrum for SMS data is essentially free, the infrastructure of SMS messaging within a carrier is non-free.

AFAICT from reading criminal news reporting, one of the first things the police do is subpoena a persons text messages, which the carriers seem to store, at least for a while. I have to assume that this includes MMS messages, too.

If you stop and think about the requirements for merely for logging the last 10 text or MMS messages of every subscriber, that's a lot of data that not only has to be routed around their network, but stored in some manageable way and probably subject to all the usual backup and storage requirements, too, and I'd guess it goes beyond 10.

Re:Good

[bill_mcgonigle]

However, there are a limited number of time slots per frequency, and a limited number of frequency slots

The number that sticks in my mind is 13,000 slots per second for SMS data. Perhaps somebody with actual working knowledge could properly characterize the scope here.

And, yeah, if there were unlimited, we'd tunnel data through them...

Re:Good

[hawguy]

https://www.google.com/voice

Re:Good

[firewrought]

The more I look at this, the more confused I am at what Target supposedly did wrong.

Depends on who you ask... The father (IIRC) thought they were sending his daughters age-inappropriate ads. Extreme privacy advocates might argue that its wrong for merchants to track individuals. Most privacy advocates might not call it wrong per set but want to use the story as part of a larger argument for laws/precautions/etc.

This story works for such privacy advocates because it has salience. And I think the reason this story has salience is that a socially pertinent ("gossipy") piece of information was determined by an outside party before the family itself knew. You can talk about privacy issues in the abstract and people don't care, but when it comes to getting the scoop on who's engaged/pregnant/divorced/humiliated/dead things can get sensitive fast.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think my grand kids at age 10 care about privacy and security?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Information about someone's preferences can also leak through ads shown on web pages, or printed material you receive in your letter box. I remember reading about a man discovering this way that his wife was pregnant before she had decided to tell him, a very similar story. That was none of their business. Targeted advertising, even if they try to camouflage it somewhat, has to relate to your preferences to be effective, and therefore has to give anyone who happens to see it a hint about those preferences. Mostly it's harmless, but occasionally it isn't, and it really could be anything that turns out to be harmful[*].

Privacy is not about what you have to hide but about why it is anyone else's business anyway. By using targeted advertising corporations make information about you their business without asking. They don't respect your privacy. A usual response from advertisers is that it's in your own interest as well, which to me means they claim they can decide what's good for me. The economy functioned before targeted advertising based on profiling was possible, the world won't collapse if we do without.

[*] I guess this may seem overly dramatic, but I've had to deal with a person who was an expert in using anything people disclose about themselves, no matter how harmless, to manipulate and discredit them. Probably a psychopath. No information is harmless with people like that.

Re:Good

[Elldallan]

No it's not even remotely hard, as long as the service provider is not a monopoly or resides in Chile/Netherlands you can just outright block Facebook, problem solved. Sure customers might move initially but pretty soon all the major providers will run the policy(either because of shady business practices or because other providers notice how potentially profitable it is).

A lot of service providers is currently blocking VoIP on their non-premium price plans, how is blocking Facebook any different?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You talk as if gun laws are homogenous across all of the USA. They are not. They vary quite extremely state to state, even city to city. Much of the USA actually has rather restrictive gun-control.

If you look across the USA, the states with the least gun control have some of the lowest crime rates. Funny how not knowing how many other people in the room might be carrying a concealed pistol tends to reduce a potential criminal's enthusiasm.

Only two states, Vermont and Alaska, make it legal to carry concealed without a special permit. If you can own a gun, you can carry. In 2008, VT ranged #44 in total crime, 50th in violent crime, and 38th in murder. In 2010, its murder rate was 1.1-per-100K, which is lower than Canada's average for 2010 (1.9).

All that gun control laws do is interfere with law-abiding citizens' ability to protect and defend themselves until the authorities arrive. Criminals, by definition, aren't going to follow the laws and WILL obtain guns, one way or another. Or use some other (legal) deadly weapon. The ability to own a gun becomes an equalizer of force for the usually-weaker victim.

And this is coming from a liberal.

While the big scary stories where someone uses a gun for evil make all the headlines, it's funny how most people miss how often legal ownership of a gun STOPS crimes. There are no shortage of them, however:

http://www.macon.com/2012/04/23/2000577/i-carry-a-gun-all-the-time-says.html
http://www.goupstate.com/article/20120121/ARTICLES/120129934/1083/ARTICLES
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/05/9968356-no-charges-for-teen-widow-who-killed-intruder
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/jan/13/kcso-shot-in-butt-during-break-in-suspect-dumped/

But I suppose stories like those don't sell as many papers.

Re:Good

[synaptik]

I have a better proposal. How about: the carriers charge more than the current market will bear, giving an opportunity for cheaper alternatives (such as, I dunno... Facebook messaging) to arise. Then the carriers start to see their SMS business dwindle away. Oh wait, that's already happening. Gosh, and no regulation needed!

Re:Good

[Oloryn]

That's if the SMS can actually be sent to Google Voice. I've run into situations where SMSs can't be sent to Google Voice. Just today, I was using a web site that wants to verify your account by sending you an SMS. If I put in my Google Voice number, the site came back with an error. And this is not the first time I've run into this.

Re:Good

[shmlco]

Target traditionally sends coupons in a booklet, not in an envelope.

Re:Good

[shmlco]

"Distances where some dumbass who knows nothing about guns can kill with one resemble distances where dumbasses who know nothing about knives can kill with one of those."

I can kill someone with a knife from six feet away?

Seriously, at the distances most handguns are used, good breath control and the rest don't matter. I'm not trying to hit the x-ring on a range target 30 feet away. I just need to pour lead into that big thing standing in front of me.

Re:Good

[shmlco]

"Also missing from your analysis is that by far most homicides involving firearms are done so with *illegally* obtained firearms..."

Your FBI link relates to OFFICER involved shootings. Cops get shot more often with illegal weapons? Duh.

How about a study from the American Journal of Epidemiology? "Results show that regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home."

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI link isn't to back up that claim, hence why it isn't adjacent to it. Either way, what you're insinuating is that it makes sense that most COPS killed by guns are killed by illegal guns, but not civilians because nobody minds killing THEM with guns directly tracable to their name...? Good thing you're not trying to make a living as an assassin... Unless... That's exactly what you want us to think...

In any event, the only important thing to remember is that there is no causal relationship between legal firearm availability to citizens and homicide rates.

Nope

[blahbooboo]

Not for me. Facebook sucks for messaging compared to iMessage or plain old texts.

At best, facebook is an email supplement

Re:Nope

[betterunixthanunix]

At best, facebook is an email supplement

How can Facebook messaging even be compared with email? Can you exchange messages with people who do not use one company's services? Can you run your own Facebook message server?

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

At least SMS messages have only the telco carrier or carriers between destinations. They only spill the beans to law enforcement if they are presented with the right post-it note.

FB messages, who knows... FB can hand the messages to anyone they please as per the AUP/EULA, which means any advertiser who is looking for building a profile on people.

Plus, I can use encryption with SMS messages. I do that on FB, and most likely the message will be flagged as spam and never delivered.

Re:Nope

[GuldKalle]

yes
https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=224049364288051

Re:Nope

[betterunixthanunix]

...apparently I am behind the times on these things.

Re:Nope

[poetmatt]

Exactly. This article is attributing to facebook what is a result of a: general market shift away from ridiculously overpriced messaging, and b: a result of simply better services that are out there, such as anything that does text messages over data, including google voice and that apple messenger thing.

Facebook's total influence on text messaging is probably neutral entirely, due to enabling people to get notifications via text messaging.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

At best, facebook is an email supplement

How can Facebook messaging even be compared with email? Can you exchange messages with people who do not use one company's services? Can you run your own Facebook message server?

When a site has ~800 million active users, you can generally expect that the person you want to communicate with is using that company's services. And Facebook isn't exactly known for having server crashes, you can also reasonably expect that messages will be sent and received when you want them to be.

Re:Nope

[betterunixthanunix]

When a site has ~800 million active users, you can generally expect that the person you want to communicate with is using that company's services

Considering that there are an estimated 2.25 billion people who use the Internet, I would say that with 800 million users, the probability that the person you want to communicate with is actually on Facebook is a little more than 1 in 3...

Re:Nope

[shiftless]

And what's the probability that you will need to contact some random person in rural Africa on any given day, compared to people in the U.S. or other Western nations? And what's the rate of Facebook usage among your people's demographic, compared to the African one? In the U.S. I live in, practically everyone and their grandmom is on Facebook. Where are you from?

Re:Nope

[shadowrat]

When a site has ~800 million active users, you can generally expect that the person you want to communicate with is using that company's services

Considering that there are an estimated 2.25 billion people who use the Internet, I would say that with 800 million users, the probability that the person you want to communicate with is actually on Facebook is a little more than 1 in 3...

i would buy a lottery ticket every week if the odds were 1 in 3. Hell, I'd buy TWO!

Re:Nope

[betterunixthanunix]

In the U.S. I live in, practically everyone and their grandmom is on Facebook

I also live in the US, and guess what? Neither I, nor my mother, nor my grandparents have Facebook. Neither do several of my coworkers, including several who quit the site.

Don't be so quick to assume that everyone has a Facebook account.

Re:Nope

[knorthern knight]

> In the U.S. I live in, practically everyone and their grandmom is on Facebook.

According to http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/ the number of Facebook ***ACCOUNTS*** corresponds to 50.72% of the US population. That includes...
* all the under-13 kids who lie about their ages http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/23/facebook-underage-users_n_839437.html
* all the people who have a squeaky-clean "employment friendly" account plus a "real account"
* all the people who have multiple accounts for Farmville. Apparently the game requires friends to do stuff for you, which is why people get annoying requests from friends playing the game.
* ever seen the ads on underground forums, selling "Likes" from 10,000 USA Facebook accounts? The only way they can deliver is by having these thousands of fake accounts under their control.

In a country with over 300 million population, all these fake accounts may only take the number up from a real 40% to a fake 50%. In much smaller countries, the fake accounts stick out like a sore thumb. At the same URL as above, Monaco shows up with 124.31% of its population on Facebook. I treat the 901 million number like an EPA gas milage estimate... always exagerated.

Re:Nope

[Dan541]

Also a lot of people, such as myself don't check Facebook very regularly. I actually find facebook to be an inconvenient form of communication most of the time. I think of it more as a self maintaining address book.

Wasn't that the plan?

[MarioMax]

I seem to recall something along the lines of Facebook buying out certain companies for the explicit purpose of killing SMS text messaging.

What a choice...

[betterunixthanunix]

On the one hand, a cartel that charges ridiculous prices for messaging. On the other, a service which will not allow you to send messages to users of other services.

Re:What a choice...

[bemymonkey]

Facebook IM is just the gateway drug... As soon as people realize that text messaging should essentially be free, they're just seconds away from installing another IM client on their phone. Most people won't, because they don't need to communicate with anyone outside their Facebook friend list... But the idea should be planted :-)

Re:What a choice...

[umghhh]

Most people??? You mean realy most people??? It is like this billion accounts is really billion people? You really believe that? It is interesting however - an uniform system of messaging primitive as it is make still more sense to me (but the price) - it is still being replaced by FB and other systems which has an effect that I need to install few other clients on my phone and use it together with SMS. I guess that is what this funny service from Apple is doing right? I suppose Apple patented it so here we go we need to reveal all to FB, pay Apple only because SMS is to expensive and people are too silly and lazy. It is fun to observe the serfdoms being built and maintained....

Re:What a choice...

[tirefire]

It's a lot like Aliens vs. Predator (2004): Whoever wins... we lose.

Re:What a choice...

[Fjandr]

You, sir, just won this thread.

Re:What a choice...

[Subm]

On the one hand, a cartel that charges ridiculous prices for messaging. On the other, a service which will not allow you to send messages to users of other services.

I must have three hands then, because sometimes I email.

Or four or more hands, since sometimes I just talk to people or send regular mail (yes, really, for business), etc.

Beware false dichotomies.

Re:What a choice...

[jo_ham]

On the one hand, a cartel that charges ridiculous prices for messaging. On the other, a service which will not allow you to send messages to users of other services.

+5 Insightful for a post that is factually incorrect? Only on slashdot!

You can send messages in and out of the FB messaging system from any email client. You don't even need a FB account of your own.

Rediculous markup

[neokushan]

SMS has a ridiculous markup, in the thousands of percent - sorry, telcos, but the gig is up. You've had your free lunch and it's over, how about instead you give us better data options so you can at least make some money out of all these free services?
Face it - SMS and phone calls are a dying business, data is the future so invest in your infrastructure, encourage its use and profit from the fact that nobody's likely to offer free universal data any time soon.

Re:Rediculous markup

[contrapunctus]

actually it's infinity percent markup since SMS costs telcos nothing at all...

Re:Rediculous markup

[crafty.munchkin]

Couldn't agree more, the cash cow of SMS messaging is dying. Now if we can just convince the majority of ISPs that excess data downloads shouldn't be its replacement, that'll be fantastic. My boss just received a $8000 excess data usage bill for his home account... *shakes head*

Re:Rediculous markup

[TheGratefulNet]

there you go.

I disabled sms on my phone since I refuse to take part of a money theft operation.

telco's take money for something that rides along with the radio signals, used or not!

that bothers me. a lot.

so, I refuse to pay even a dime for sms 'service'.

its actually the biggest con in the game. (shakes head, not quite understanding the draw of this vs universal email that is just about as fast and just as easy to use.)

Re:Rediculous markup

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming an existing GSM network (and the loss of revenue from people using SMS instead of making voice calls) the cost of SMS is near enough 0. The amount providers (particularly in the US where people may pay to receive texts) have been charging for SMS is obscene. I've been switching over to Skype and iMessage to escape some of my carrier's bullshit.

The investment in equipment and spectrum makes this a difficult industry to get in to, but once in it's a fucking gravy train just so long as carriers can continue to milk SMS, roaming and international calls. Data in particular is looking pretty expensive in some countries, reminding me of ISPs in the early 90s.

Re:Rediculous markup

[irtza]

While SMS pricing structure may be a cash cow, I really don't think its fair to say it costs them nothing. There may be no (or few) running costs associated with it; however, there are hefty baseline fees with maintaining the structure that is used. Just because they would maintain this anyway is not a reason to allow it to be free. That would be like saying fast food places should have to give away soda because they are makingf all this money on food and the soda doesn't cost them much anyways.

SMS may not be a heavy burden on the towers, but at its time, I think it was reasonable that they charge for each of the services they offered. There are currently smaller carriers that do not charge for SMS or even air time, but they may not have the best coverage area. I think that until the oligopoly of the towers is addressed, there will be little incentive for the larger carriers to find ways to squeeze money out of selected individuals (early adopters, corporations, heavy users of infrastructure).

Re:Rediculous markup

[fa2k]

actually it's infinity percent markup since SMS costs telcos nothing at all...

Great, now let's tunnel IP over SMS and get infinite, free data bandwidth

Re:Rediculous markup

[fragMasterFlash]

Just because SMS piggybacks parts of the cellular network protocol to get from the tower to your device that does not make it free. While I agree it is a cash cow given current pricing in the US you cannot completely ignore the backend and administrative costs of maintaining any large scale, reliable communications protocol. And don't forget the cost storing all those messages for our law enforcement overlords to keep us safe from ourselves.

Re:Rediculous markup

[neokushan]

Despite my above post, I do actually agree with the opinion that sending and receiving a message does cost a sum of money greater than zero as you have to take into account the cost of building and maintaining the network. So what if it uses a part of the signal that otherwise goes unused, it still costs money to keep that signal broadcasting 24 hours a day, 365.25 days a year. To the guy above who feel's he's being ripped off for this, I wonder if he keeps his home connection running 24/7, or his telephone off the hook 24/7 since he's paying a fixed monthly sum for something that "isn't being used".
Still, whatever it costs is trivial so the markup is obscene. At 1c a message, they'd still make a huge profit and I dare say free services like those in the article would make less of an impact.

Re:Rediculous markup

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be like saying fast food places should have to give away soda because they are makingf all this money on food and the soda doesn't cost them much anyways.

I'm not asking them to give away soda, but that is a good comparison. You know the mark-up on fountain soda in fast food joints? Soda is in fact a pretty good money spinner for food joints, both fast food and restaurants. My problem with carriers in some countries is that they're charging a fucking across the board. A colleague found that the cost of data once he goes over his set amount is in fact higher than the limit the EU is about to impose on data roaming. It will be cheaper for him to go a SIM from this same company, but their office in another country, and use that for data than it would be to pay for data used above his allocation. The economics of course don't quite work here, since overall he'd pay more by not having that initial allocation, but really it's crazy the amount we're paying for fucking limited amounts. Typically here 1 gigabyte is in the higher end (which I'll admit is a fair bit of data) and anyone going above that will be paying through the nose.

Carriers do have a shit load of infrastructure to maintain - that I don't doubt. What I do see though are the major carriers showing margins that wouldn't look too bad in the soda industry. Selling airtime isn't as profitable as sugared water, but still damn good margins.

Re:Rediculous markup

[sunking2]

It's called paying for a service. Does the waitress deserve 20% of the price of a meal because she jotted down an order and filled your cup with water? The service industry charges what the consumer will bare. Not what it actually costs. If you don't like what they are charging then don't go out to eat or use their service. They have no obligation to charge you based on their costs.

Re:Rediculous markup

[neokushan]

Well done, you've managed to sum up the article even more succinctly than the summary by using an analogy. "If you don't like it, don't use it!" is exactly what's happening here, people are using other, free or cheaper services such as Facebook Messenger instead of SMS. Clap clap for you.

Re:Rediculous markup

[xyzzyman]

Already done: http://www.techspot.com/news/45432-smozzy-android-app-lets-you-surf-the-web-via-sms.html

Re:Rediculous markup

[Registered Coward v2]

SMS has a ridiculous markup, in the thousands of percent - sorry, telcos, but the gig is up. You've had your free lunch and it's over, how about instead you give us better data options so you can at least make some money out of all these free services? Face it - SMS and phone calls are a dying business, data is the future so invest in your infrastructure, encourage its use and profit from the fact that nobody's likely to offer free universal data any time soon.

A couple of thoughts:

The cost of producing something only determines if it will produced, based on what people are willing to pay. Since people are willing to pay for SMS carries sell it; at a price that people are willing to pay.

While the current delivery methods for SMS and phones may be dying; the need for them isn't. I also don't think the free model as in Skype can sustain itself if it became the predominate model; rather Skype wouldld push people to pay plans for non-Skype to Skype calls if only to help pay for the infrastructure. Want free Skype to Skye? Pay for a line for non-Skype calls and you get Skype to Skype. Vonage already does this.

Re:Rediculous markup

[Anonymous Coward]

Whilst SMS is massively over priced it's also wrong to assume that SMS is essentially free from a network capacity (let's say UMTS) point of view. Phones don't always have a signalling radio bearer (SRB) set up - an SRB is approximately 25% the cost of a voice call from an air interface and base station baseband point of view). Also SMS causes phone to change state (from RRC idle to connected) which needs to be dealt with by the big switches that base stations talk to (RNCs). RNCs are aggregating points for a bunch of base stations and are only able to support a given number of simultaneous state changes (which is why smart phones broke a bunch of mobile carriers - push email makes phones very chatty). Yes holding times of SMS are small compared to voice calls (depending on hardware a single cell can support approximately 30 simultaneous voice calls without unacceptable blocking)... But don't imagine for a second that you can't overload a cell by sending a ton of SMS (which by virtue of being signalling tends to have a very high priority). That being said - data costs more than SMS, so I don't disagree with the article I just thought people might find it interesting.

Re:Rediculous markup

[Anonymous Coward]

The service industry charges what the consumer will bare.

"Here's your burger, Ma'am. Now, will you please show us your breasts?"

Re:Rediculous markup

[V-similitude]

(shakes head, not quite understanding the draw of this vs universal email that is just about as fast and just as easy to use.)

The draw is when some pretty girl texts you, you don't give her a lecture about how it's a big con, you just suck it up and text her back.

Re:Rediculous markup

[mtmra70]

With infinite ping times!!!

Re:Rediculous markup

[Anonymous Coward]

(shakes head, not quite understanding the draw of this vs universal email that is just about as fast and just as easy to use.)

The draw is when some pretty girl texts you,

You gotta love the wanderings in the realms of fiction (with a strong hint of fantasy) some /. posters take.

Re:Rediculous markup

[Yvan256]

My boss just received a $8000 excess data usage bill for his home account...

Well... at least it wasn't over 9000.

Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[__aaltlg1547]

They're getting paid. Facebook replaces messaging because people are using it through their smart phone. So they're paying for data plans.

They should get worried if people stop buying data plans.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

With the fact that the data plans are so small for phones (just doing a round of Windows updates and application updates on a laptop will put me over cap if I had a phone plan dating from 2010 or newer.), the carriers are making in the money even with people that have unlimited texting.

Before I picked up an iPhone, I paid $75 a month. With the iPhone, I easily pay $200/month.

Texting isn't where you will end up being robbed, it is the data plans and the paltry bandwidth quotas.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[the_enigma_1983]

A facebook message consisting of 160 characters would be less than 1kB (amortised). The usual cost of an SMS is between 10c and 25c. 10c per kB equates to $100 per MB.

In other words, telco profit margins on SMS when compared to FB messages are orders of magnitude smaller. It might be even worse, I've heard that SMS messages are sent in some form of "control" packet hence the 160 char limit, meaning that SMS overheads are (somewhat) essential to running the mobile network.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[Joe_Dragon]

X2 the price as you pay for both ways.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[aliquis]

They don't pay 10 cent / 160 characters of data though ;)

But then again a message on Facebook doesn't use 160 characters of data either ..

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[yacc143]

Not really, in most countries you do not pay for receiving calls or texts.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[ehiris]

Data plan markups are getting ridiculous though. All providers except for Spring have data caps on the iPhone. So yeah, AT&T has a history of shitty business practices which require SMS-type markups.

ie the AT&T phone which people paid many times over with lease fees, monopoly break-up. Small things.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[crafty.munchkin]

Isn't there a better plan for you to go onto? I get 2gb of data with my $49.95 plan, and the most I've ever used has been 900mb in a month...

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[Paco103]

In the US you do. It was accepted on phone calls when cell phones first came out, because the caller does not pay extra to place the call as they do in some countries (if I understand correctly). This was more acceptable since I have the option to not answer a call. With text messages, however, I don't have the option to not get one. In the US, I don't know of any company that doesn't charge for incoming texts, but some do charge less for incoming texts than outgoing.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are you paying there?
I pay € 9.90 for my data plan, 0.09€ per call minute or text message. (Of course I use iMessage/WhatsApp likte in TFA so there's effectively no text messaging cost)
How can you pay $200/month?

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[yahwotqa]

Wow, you're getting royally screwed (as if you didn't know already). My condolences.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[Barsteward]

porn is expensive

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

In the US you do. It was accepted on phone calls when cell phones first came out, because the caller does not pay extra to place the call as they do in some countries (if I understand correctly). This was more acceptable since I have the option to not answer a call. With text messages, however, I don't have the option to not get one. In the US, I don't know of any company that doesn't charge for incoming texts, but some do charge less for incoming texts than outgoing.

No, it is all about the numbering plans for cellphones and landlines. Unlike the rest of the planet, in the US cell phones and landlines cannot be determined by telephone number thus US cell carriers decided to charge for incoming calls instead.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in the US, and when I first switched to my company in 2004 I got the cheapest plan they had ($30 a month at the time). It did not include text messaging, only local/long distant calls (unlimited). I was still able to receive text/sms/pic messages for no charge. I am still with the same company, I believe their cheapest plan is $40/month and it includes text, talk, data (all unlimited).

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice. You realize that telcos get paid for terminating/receiving callls by other telcos, right? They should be paying you for generating income for them.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

Us Cellular, headquartered out of Chicago, has free incoming everything on their plans. Incoming calls are free, incoming texts are free, incoming pictures are free, and incoming video messages are free. They also offer free battery replacements (you just walk in and give them your old one and they give you a replacement) and you can back up your contacts for free over the network. Price-wise they are cheaper than any other carrier with excellent coverage (at least in the Chicago suburbs and Green Bay area where I have been). The only problem I have with them is they tend to be heavily geared towards smartphones and have a really small selection of lower end phones. They also tend to be lagging behind other providers in network capabilities (I don't think they have 4G services yet).

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[Nemyst]

But we have to cover a greater area with fewer people than Europe and and and...

Oh fuck it we just love money.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[Anonymous Coward]

TracFone (a prepaid MVNO) had a handful of models early on (5+ years ago) that had free incoming texts. Even on current models, I think you can decide not to open a text and you will not be deducted "units" but you do not know who sent the text until you open it, so it's not really that great unless you only read texts that you're expecting.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[clickclickdrone]

I just find it bizarre than anyone would have to pay to receive either a call or a text. Utterly bizarre.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[Osgeld]

but then you have to log in, navigate pages, dodge ad's, show me a 1kb page anywhere on facebook

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[RendonWI]

US Cellular is free incoming texts, and free incoming calls. I think they are 5th largest in the country.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[quacking duck]

My iPhone 4S has a monthly plan of 250 daytime minutes, unlimited evening/weekends, free calls to other local phones on the same carrier, visual voice mail, call display, 2000 outgoing text messages, and 6 GB data.

It costs $65 a month, $10 less than your pre-iPhone bill. And this is in Canada, a country considered one of the worst when it comes to rip-off level cell phone plans.

What country are you in, and what the heck do you have on your plan that it costs $200/month, and will put you over cap for a single round of Windows and program updates (usually a few tens of megabytes at most, if you're not updating a newly-rebuilt system)?

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[the_enigma_1983]

I didn't say there were 1kb pages on FB, I said each message would probably come in at under 1kb amortised.

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[segin]

This is America. Tiered data plans are all the rage these days. They cost roughly $10 USD for 1GB. The exception, for now, is Sprint, but they use a nasty CDMA2000 network (and let's not get into the debate of how much CDMA2000 networks suck - your phone is tied to the network by serial number alone, there are no physically portable subscriber identity modules for CDMA2000 networks here in the US, save for Verizon Wireless, and only in the phones that also do LTE, carriers decide what handsets they will allow on the network, and will piss and moan to activate and reprogram handsets from other carriers, if they do at all - the subscriber identity is programmed into the phones themselves.)

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[segin]

In exchange, landline and ISDN users aren't getting royally screwed every time they call a mobile. We don't have a separate namespace for mobiles, they are allocated telephone numbers in the same namespace as landlines. And since landline numbers can be "ported" (that is, converted) into mobile numbers, there's really no way to bake "caller pays" into mobile billing (there is literally no proper way to determine which number is a mobile and which is a landline and which is VoIP and which is ISDN and which is..., they all look the same.) It also enables people to do away with landlines completely, as others would otherwise be adverse to calling someone if their one and only telephone was a mobile that incurred an extra toll to call. Also, don't you Europeans get hit even harder on mobile-to-mobile calls?

Re:Don't worry about the mobile carriers

[segin]

I find it utterly bizarre that the landline bill might be double next month because I accidentally called someone at their mobile. Here, 555-123-4566 might be a mobile and 555-123-4567 might be a landline. There's no proper way to tell them apart, as we don't have a non-geographic code namespace for mobiles, they are assigned local numbers in the geographic area the subscriber identity is established, in the same namespace as landlines and VoIP numbers. And mobile numbers can be converted to landline numbers and vice versa. It's called "number portability." With all that said, subscriber-pays billing makes a whole lot more sense.

Earnings from sms?

[Ries]

Even the most basic plan (12 dollar/mo, 3 GB data, unlimited sms) in Denmark includes unlimited text messaging.

Re:Earnings from sms?

[Nemyst]

My 20/month plan includes 100 minutes and nothing else (no call display, no voice mail). I need to add 20/month on top to get 1GB data.

Yes, there's a continental rift between NA and EU. But hey, I get 911 free!

Re:Earnings from sms?

[gl4ss]

Even the most basic plan (12 dollar/mo, 3 GB data, unlimited sms) in Denmark includes unlimited text messaging.

that's because denmark has actual competition and probably jumping from carrier to carrier is a breeze since they're all the same tech.. why do you think american operators love their cdma and silly one operator 3g bands?

Re:Earnings from sms?

[Anonymous Coward]

My 20/month plan includes 100 minutes and nothing else (no call display, no voice mail). I need to add 20/month on top to get 1GB data.

Wait, what?

In the US, knowing who is calling you is an optional extra (for even more $$$)?! You guys really got the shitty end of the bargain!
I mean here in CE, I'm outraged over my 3GB data limit (soft limit, it will just drop speed if I go over), and the fact that SMS is really just 63 characters per message (unless you are fine with a ridiculously limited character set). But I've never, ever heard of the possibility that a carrier would be disabling basic functionality (like knowing who is calling you). Who in their right mind would be giving them their money?

(Posting AC to save my mods)

Re:Earnings from sms?

[Nemyst]

That's actually Canada, not US. And it's 4/month just to get call display.

I wish I could pack up and leave, but the other providers are even worse. Bell and Rogers are pretty much evil incarnate.

What?

[sureshot007]

So, if you have a phone plan that includes unlimited text messages, but don't use them as much now, wouldn't that be ADDING to the teleco's revenue?

Further more, how would a data driven app displace a cellular function??? Text messaging uses less power and resources on my phone. I can text all day long but if have to be connected to the internet to use facebook, I get far less life out of my battery. I don't get why people would prefer a data app over a native cell feature...but that's just me.

Re:What?

[bondsbw]

SMS messages are routed over control channels, which in most cases means that there is practically zero additional cost for the carrier.

So, no, the failure to use text messages doesn't change carrier revenue. The failure to extract money makes a lot of difference for carrier revenue... which is what happens if you no longer get a texting plan, or if like me, never had one and stop sending the ~10 messages per month I have been doing.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

why would you need both an unlimited text message plan and an unlimited data plan if your unlimited messages via gtalk or fb or whatever will fit in the unlimited data plan. you're paying telcos for an unnecessary text plan

Re:What?

[Paco103]

Because it's free. I use Google Voice as my primary number now. Texting would cost me $10/month extra. With Google Voice, I can text all day long for "free" on my included data plan. I get by on the 200MB plan and rarely pass 150MB, even with Trillian for Android on MSN, AOL, Facebook, and Google Talk, Google Voice, and e-mail connected 24/7. Cell phone cost on texting is RIDICULOUS! I have a 900Minute family plan with about 3000 roll over minutes banked, unlimited mobile to mobile, and 200MB data. . . . but they still charge me 10 cents per text message or $10/month, which is outrageous. There should at LEAST be some kind of conversion factor, like 10 text messages per minute, and deduct it from what I'm already paying for. THAT I would accept.

Re:What?

[JazzHarper]

So, if you have a phone plan that includes unlimited text messages, but don't use them as much now, wouldn't that be ADDING to the teleco's revenue?

No. Revenue is the same, whether you use the service or not. If customers are not using an unlimited service that is included in their plans, it reduces the provider's costs (very slightly), which might improve earnings, but would not increase (or decrease) revenue.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, people are paying for nothing.

Cutting traffic?

[Dcnjoe60]

Exactly how is facebook cutting traffic for the carriers? If I send a text message via FB versus the sms application in my phone, are not the same amount of bytes being transferred? Actually, the FB transfer probably uses more traffic.

What is true, though, is that SMS is a private service that the carriers gouge the public on in pricing and they haven't found a way to exploit the user who uses FB for their texting. At least not yet.

Re:Cutting traffic?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I send a text message via FB versus the sms application in my phone, are not the same amount of bytes being transferred?

Yes (well, maybe) but not in the same way.

SMS is sent in empty sections of the headers of what are essentially "ping" packages. These packages would be sent anyway, with the space used for SMS containing random junk. SMS uses literally zero extra data transfer since it piggybacks on packages that are sent regardless. Facebook, on the other hand, uses a regular data transfer which uses capacity on the network.

Re:Cutting traffic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly how is facebook cutting traffic for the carriers? If I send a text message via FB versus the sms application in my phone, are not the same amount of bytes being transferred? Actually, the FB transfer probably uses more traffic.

What is true, though, is that SMS is a private service that the carriers gouge the public on in pricing and they haven't found a way to exploit the user who uses FB for their texting. At least not yet.

FB "texting" implies that you have a data connection.

Carriers gouge FAR more for data plans than they do for SMS texting plans these days. Not sure if everyone here is using Boost Mobile or what, but if you pay $0.10-0.25 per text message... you're doing it wrong.

Re:Cutting traffic?

[damn_registrars]

Exactly how is facebook cutting traffic for the carriers? If I send a text message via FB versus the sms application in my phone, are not the same amount of bytes being transferred? Actually, the FB transfer probably uses more traffic.

You got that right. SMS uses virtually no traffic for the carrier, it is well above 99% profit. Facebook isn't hurting their traffic - it is actually increasing their traffic. Rather, it is hurting their bottom line because they can't get away with marking up data rates to the degree they can mark up text rates. This "story" is basically just the carriers whining that their profit margins are decreasing because they got too comfortable with the obscene returns they were getting from text messages.

Re:Cutting traffic?

[gmhowell]

I think they have Facebook on computers now.

No huge chunks in Europe

[Mirvnillith]

In Sweden text messages tend to be free (but only the first 5000 each month) with plans at about $21 a month (this example with 3GB data as well). I know the US is different (recipient paying for text message and such), but there are operators surviving without this huge chunk of revenue ...

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[lxs]

The first 5000?

I can honestly say that I haven't sent 5000 text messages in my entire life.

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[betterunixthanunix]

Surviving, but with a smaller yacht for the CEO...

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[betterunixthanunix]

When I was in high school (a decade ago), I had a friend who managed to send/receive 14000 text messages in a single month. I have no idea how that is possible, but his parents took away his phone privileges after that.

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[I_am_Jack]

Then you weren't a teenage girl with a cell phone. My daughter averages 5200 a month .

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[Hadlock]

Clearly you aren't a teenage girl. I worked with a girl in 2006 who had just graduated high school and was in community college, she would send something like 1200 texts a week. 20 friends x ~15 simultaneous conversations, with all the "lol"s and "wut r u doing?"s and "im bored"s each using their own message, plus response, general drama etc... adds up. I probably sent 1200 "text messages" a week over AIM when I was in high school. It's just that mobile phones didn't exist yet for my age group, nor did their SMS functionality work across networks yet.

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[Paco103]

I'm guessing in Sweden, you also buy your own phones? In my opinion, the biggest problem with the US market is that phones are included with all your plans (at least from the 4 major carriers). I bought my last phone outright. It was the Google Dev Phone 1 (Unlocked TMobile G1). Did I get a discount for providing my own phone? Nope. Should I have, since I didn't have them pay for it for me? Absolutely.

TMobile I believe finally offers a bring-your-own-phone discounted rate, but they also have weaker coverage than AT&T or Verizon. Since carriers mostly provide the phones (even if you buy them outright from them), they control what's on them. They control whether data tethering is enabled (in my opinion, valid when we had unlimited smart phone data plans, but NOT when I have 200MB or 2GB fixed plans. . . then I get to use it how I want). They control what features are available. (My old Motorola Razr had IMAP e-mail disabled by AT&T, even though the phone was fully capable of it). AND they fill your phone with bloatware crap that you can't remove without voiding the warranty.

I wish they'd be split up. Carriers sell service. They have absolutely no control in the phones. THIS would be better for consumers. They can finance a phone to you, but it has a separate, line item charge for a fixed amount of time. It can be included in the same monthly bill, but it needs to be clear on the bill what is for your service and what is for your phone. My mom is now using my old G1, and my dad is using the same Razr he got 5 years ago, shouldn't they be getting discounts since they haven't taken a new phone from the carrier in 5 years?

Imagine if your ISP had deals like this. If you want a computer that can play all the cool games your friends are playing and share pictures with them, you HAVE to go to Windstream, even though they are terrible. Of course, Windstream may not have service in your area, but that's really not their problem is it? You can buy the computer that Windstream sells used on e-bay, or you can buy it directly from Windstream without a contract by paying full price, but it won't work on any other ISP unless you void the warranty and have some technical skills.

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[tirefire]

Wow, that's roughly one text message every 5-6 minutes, assuming 8 hours' sleep per day, along with a 31-day month.

I'm in my early twenties and I feel like I'm getting old. I miss the '90s when people actually spoke to other people in the same room as them. It seems like everyone was more relaxed, or maybe that's just the economy these days, I don't know. But back in the day, if the conversation lulled, someone would change the subject instead of everyone folding their hands in iphone/android prayer until someone found a meme to share.

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[ZorinLynx]

What the heck do they talk about so much? 5200 messages a month sounds completely ridiculous!

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

While it certainly is an option to buy your own phone, most carriers offer various phones for an additional $5-10 to your monthly bill - depending if you got a 6 or 24 month contract and the retail value of the phone (so, essentially it's a rent-to-own scheme).

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

facebook/twitter updates, etc. probably contribute a lot to that number.

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[phantomfive]

On a lot of phones, you can send a mass text message to a lot of your friends at once. That is probably what she does, and how they converse.

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds ridiculous but it's not as much as it sounds. Most people's texts contain a sentence at most. If that were 5200 sentences that'd be about 82000 words. But keep in mind each send consumes one message, even if it provides no new information.

However this is a typical text exchange:
1: Sup?
2: nn yo?
3: nm*
4: you*
5: Just hangin.
6: ;-)
8: So nothin nw thn
9: new*
10: :-p

So ten texts here equals 9 words, and half of the texts are just corrections (either bad typing or autocorrect, as depicted even if it's understood what they said) or smilies. Repeat another 520 times, really just 17 per day for your 17 friends and you have 5200. Remember we're talking about teenage girls so it's even worse than I've depicted.

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember reading that swedish carriers will have to raise prices eventually though, due to the almost non-existant profit margins caused by the current price war.

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[Inda]

"Send to group" is the way to send 14,000 messages in a month. I often send 30 in one go using this method.

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[skerit]

It's the same in Belgium. For a topup of 15 euros I get 1gb of data, 1000 sms and 1 hour of calls to make. Belgium is actually one of the most expensive countries in the EU of mobile phone subscriptions, and this one I have is the cheapest of the lot. I always found it fascinating you have to pay to receive a message in the U.S. People would scream bloody murder over here. The EU has even made some laws as to how much a text message can cost.

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you weren't a teenage girl with a cell phone. My daughter averages 5200 a month

Fella - that's a warning sign. Please don't regret not parenting later. My daughter pays a nickel per text and gets along just fine with her friends.

Re:No huge chunks in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds ridiculous but it's not as much as it sounds. Most people's texts contain a sentence at most. If that were 5200 sentences that'd be about 82000 words. But keep in mind each send consumes one message, even if it provides no new information.

However this is a typical text exchange:
1: Sup?
2: nn yo?
3: nm*
4: you*
5: Just hangin.
6: ;-)
8: So nothin nw thn
9: new*
10: :-p

That would be ridiculous even in free Facebook messages, let alone in SMS. Even when drunk!

The really sad thing is, I am uncertain whether your example is just very unrealistic (as I hope it is), or it is actually a reasonable possibility in your country.

(Disclaimer: yes, I do communicate with teenagers often via text.
And no, I'm not a Coward, just saving my mods.)

Facebook =

[FudRucker]

developed by a narcissist for narcissists

Re:Facebook =

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believed that you'd post everything as an AC. Instead you feel the need to put the stamp of your 'name' on your thoughts.

Re:Facebook =

[betterunixthanunix]

developed by a narcissist for advertisers, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies (in no particular order)

FTFY

Re:Facebook =

[AmberBlackCat]

I use Facebook more than text messaging, but for only one reason. You can have conversations with more than one person at a time. If text messaging had group conversations, I'd probably never use Facebook for personal communication.

Re:Facebook =

[Dan541]

The advantage of using SMS over Facebook is that people can only send you Text. As opposed to all the shit that now floods facebook timelines.

Carriers are lucky

[Yew2]

Without facebook and others, how many consumers (outside of iPhone holders) really wanted any kind of data plan or could be convinced to pay that extra $20++ a month beyond already high cellular prices? Business users that required mobile email, right? Besides, how many times does someone have to get charged that same $20 a month for texting before they get a plan? We can be wasteful, but when it comes to our cell phones they are usually the first bill that gets paid, even if its at the last minute! If it werent for content management sites like Facebook making it easy and useful for everyday folk to collaborate in a mobile setting then telecom couldnt possibly convince everyday customers to pay so much as they are now "to get my facebook on my phone". Anyone shop for a new plan lately? You can't really get anything from big telecom "with facebook" for less than about $80 a month after all is said and done (except metroPCS, but if you have had them you know you get what you pay for) Sure the markup on texts is something like 5000% but with the absence of truly unlimited data and all these pretty new phones available to everyone, something tells me they will make their numbers. How many texts is $20 a month even with the markup? Now can we help them get more spectrum please?

wait for may 19 / your xmpp day

[rzr]

Let me remind about may 19 : http://www.opendiscussionday.org/# Time to leave facebook, msn for a open protocol with decentralized network etc -- http://rzr.online.fr/q/xmpp

twitter app?

[vlm]

I don't text FB or tweet, but wouldn't the destroyer of SMS be the twitter smartphone app, not FB? Isn't twitter via app closer in concept to SMS than FB?

Could be an argument for the FB borg adsorbing everything trivial and mundane, this specifically looking at messaging being adsorbed..

Re:twitter app?

[Hadlock]

Twitter is impossibly hard to follow on their website, especially long drawn out conversations, and its not terribly private, which is important in high school drama. SMS is just a poor replacement of instant messenger, but it's already preinstalled on all phones so the barrier to entry is low. FB messenger is also already preinstalled on most phones, as well as any computer with a web browser, and doesn't cost money. It's important to look at SMS as an instant messaging service, not a broadcast web service. All twitter is good for is networking among journalists and celeberty marketing.

Re:twitter app?

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter does support direct messages, which are private. It is also isn't as worthless as you assert it is.

That said, your point stands. Direct messages aren't really the main draw of Twitter; using Twitter just for IM would be weird.

What? Why?

[crossmr]

The facebook app is terrible for general messaging.
What is more likely killing texts are apps like whatsapp, kakaotalk, and others like that.
They're generally seamless where facebook is far more intrusive.
not to mention you can more easily send photos and videos with the other apps than you can with facebook.

Re:What? Why?

[iserlohn]

Agreed. Facebook messenger is the biggest pile of monkey dung ever. It is beyond terrible. The only use for it is to leave message to people that aren't on What'sapp or Gmail.

Data Plans

[ironicsky]

They have already replaced SMS with data as the new cash cow. 1Gb for $30? My home ISP gives me 200Gb of data for about $10more. And of course, you generally need data to use Facebook Messenger

Data Plans....

[Luthair]

Are more expensive than the text messaging plans anyway.

Board meeting at carrier

[danielcolchete]

CEO: Listen everyone, today we will create a service that will charge a hundred times more to send only a few bytes, less than 200 bytes.
Board: But anyone can do it almost for free through the Internet!
CEO: So our true cost here will be to keep the internet from the users as much as possible. We have to use every weapon available: charge too much, give them horrible smartphones, have phone makers in our hands, etc.
Board: Hey, Apple and Google released smartphones allowing anyone to write an app for it.
CEO: Crap! Well, at least we could hold the world on our hands for almost ten years... Shame we lost it...

what proof that fb is a bigger reason than any oth

[yincrash]

er messaging service?

i would think gtalk being on every single android phone by default is a pretty big reason. as well as things like google voice having free sms. fb messenger seems like one reason, but zdnet just seems to be speculating that it's the biggest reason

Jack up the price of a data plan

[tepples]

Well, it's hard to compete with free.

Of course you can. You can jack up the minimum price for a smartphone data plan so that it's more expensive than unlimited texting, forcing cost-conscious customers onto dumbphones.

Re:Jack up the price of a data plan

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you go blackberry you never go back.

Re:Jack up the price of a data plan

[knorthern knight]

> Of course you can. You can jack up the minimum price for a smartphone data plan so that
> it's more expensive than unlimited texting, forcing cost-conscious customers onto dumbphones.

So I end up with a Nokia 6015i as my cellphone http://www.mobiledia.com/phones/nokia/6015i.html and an unconnected HTC Desire from an Ebay reseller as my wifi web-browser/email/camera/FM radio/ebook reader/kitchen-sink.

Moving texts between cell sites

[tepples]

SMS costs telcos nothing at all

...to transmit, as text messages are stored in an otherwise unused field of the GSM keep-alive packet. But maintaining the software and backhaul network for moving these 160-byte packets around from one cell site to the next does cost greater than zero.

Re:Moving texts between cell sites

[allo]

let epsilon be greater than zero

Re:Moving texts between cell sites

[shiftless]

Syntax error

Re:Moving texts between cell sites

[Anonymous Coward]

if text messeging don't exsist, these costs would exactly the same, ie ZERO!!!

Re:Moving texts between cell sites

[Anonymous Coward]

.....because running an sms relay process on existing infrastructure costs real money....right.

Par value for txting is #20/mo.and falling

[LostCluster2.0]

Text messaging flows through a pipe... that is, in any given area there is plenty of room for more text messages in flow, and the only way the system fails is if there's enough to fill the pipe. Unused bits of airtime are like empty airline seats, they're worth $0 once the time passes. So, does 50 cents a message seem reasonable when e-mail is charged at the data rate which is much cheaper... and AIM,Skype, Google's products, MySpace, Facebool, etc. all also travel over the data pipe? SO, there it is, plain text messaging is going away.... and it's going to be a lot like the old days of Prodigy and AOL where you have to select which protocol to use to reach your friends.

scam

[Pumpkin Tuna]

Good riddance. I could never understand how people fell for the scam of text messages to begin with. Especially when many people got e-mail on their phones and continued to use texts at a couple of cents per pop.

Wired has a lot more spectrum

[tepples]

Your DSL, cable, or fiber ISP has a lot more spectrum available to it than any cellular carrier because copper and fiber act as waveguides. Therefore, such a wired ISP can provide far more last-mile throughput.

Re:what proof that fb is a bigger reason than any

[Hadlock]

I had this conversation with my friend the other day. I noticed most of my friends falling off gtalk, and asked my buddy about it; his response was "well, I still leave gtalk running, but mostly only talk to you and (other good friend) on it. everyone else is on fb messenger these days, in particular girls" which sort of sold me on the idea. Gtalk had critical mass for a few years, but the male:female ratio is about 1:1 on facebook, and most everyone you know on facebook already has the chat app installed either through their web browser, or through the facebook app. Most of my sailing contacts are on gtalk, who are also guys, but as a single male I find myself using fb messenger talking to females a lot more often. gtalk gets use perhaps once a week or so, and keeps getting used less and less.

and nothing of value...

[roc97007]

Seriously, the profits the carriers were getting from text messaging were artificial anyway. Surely they realized that. Text messaging uses otherwise unused bandwidth at the cell site and is *way* overpriced for the value received. It was a glitch in the wireless revenue stream that any savvy provider would realize will go away at some point.

Facebook on a wireless device does use up data plan, which can also be expensive, but is orders of magnitude cheaper than texting. It's evolution in action.

I wait with bated breath for the carriers to lobby for protectionist legislation. Perhaps a surcharge on data plans to cover the lost revenue from people abandoning texting.

No, they'll hate this for sure.

[Mr. Underbridge]

They're getting paid. Facebook replaces messaging because people are using it through their smart phone. So they're paying for data plans.

No way it offsets. Even if you got ass-pounded with some $0.25/MB data charge, that SMS message is less than a kB. We're talking a tenth of a cent of data per SMS at worst, maybe less, for the worst data plan imaginable.

On the other hand, the carriers typically upcharge $10-20 for text plans, or $0.05-0.10 per SMS. SMS plans were definitely their cash cow, and the data used will absolutely not outweigh.

The only way it would make them more money is if people who *wouldn't otherwise have paid for data* did so as an upgrade to text, but I'm thinking the numbers there don't justify the low-cost, high-revenue stream they're losing. I think what happens is that people who want data for a variety of reasons drop text because they realize they don't need it. And I don't think the carriers will like that much.

They definitely want to still have the phone + text + data plans being sold, because it seems like you're getting 3 things instead of 2, so when you get that three-figure cell bill, it might remind consumers just a bit less of sodomy.

Re:No, they'll hate this for sure.

[segin]

Here in America, they usually charge $0.20 per SMS. Both ways!

cost compared to SMS

[mschaffer]

I am sure this has nothing to do with the alleged high cost of SMS compared to the cost to Tweet.

AOL Instant Messenger

[jfdavis668]

Are we just going back to AIM?

If they were smart. And greedy.

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd figure out a way to allow you to post facebook comments over sms. For an additional fee.

If they were smart...

And greedy.

They've got one of those down pretty good.

data plan costs more

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? With my carrier (US Cellular) a data plan and the smart phone cost more, much more, than my unlimited text-messaging plan with clamshell phone that I have in place now. The carrier would make more money from me if I chose to purchase a smart phone and use facebook messaging instead of text messages. Got some analysis to back up your "huge chunk" claim?

Lisa needs braces.

[Anonymous Coward]

damn I gotta work on this impulse control

Facebook Messenger

[DaMattster]

I have a feeling this app might be partially responsible for a paradigm shift in data pricing. In other words, carriers will want to compensate for lost revenue by making data even more expensive. There is already talks about going VoLTE. This would turn the basic phone call into a data transmission and subtract from available data quotas in people's plans. CTIA is lobbying VoLTE as a boon to consumers. Not so as it actually makes it more expensive to the consumer to make cellular phone calls. We would be going backwards to the days when cellular calls were .25 a minute or more.

Re:Facebook Messenger

[gl4ss]

it's not just this app. this revolution has been ongoing for about 10 years now actually as well, since programmable smartphones hit common consumers and gprs dataplans came with data amounts instead of charging per minute like previous gsm data, so suddenly it actually became pretty cheap to hang on irc 24/7 wherever you were. nerds were first at it of course, but msn messengers weren't that far away from that.

one of the operators bitching about people using skype on data nowadays in finland actually had this msn-messenger plan for a while back in the day, with that you could use an app they provided for msn. now I never understood why the fuck, because you could msn just as well with the plain data plan too, but that's the model they'd like - charging you per type of activity, not for reality.

Too much junk on Facebook

[Animats]

A friend of mine with an active social life used to be heavily into Facebook, and the way to reach her was to send to her Facebook account. Then she got an iPhone. After a month or so, she started checking Facebook only once a day, and told me to use SMS or email if I needed a quick response.

You can't pull out your smartphone for every Facebook update. Most of them are effectively spam.

Re:Too much junk on Facebook

[Hillgiant]

It might also be that the facebook app on the iPhone is complete shit. Gets worse with every update. Frequent force quits and even reinstalls are required to keep it responsive.

Good! Finally!

[DaneM]

Considering just how widely abused SMS messaging is--both by people who use it when they really shouldn't, and the phone companies who charge much more per-message than they have any reason to--and how much of a pain-in-the-backside the protocol is to work with (requiring little short of a full PBX gateway to interface it with a computer), I'm quite inclined to jump for joy at this finding.

On the downside, a decent data plan is even MORE expensive, and the messaging protocols are fractious and often both proprietary and frequently problematic. (Facebook, MSN, AIM, Yahoo, I'm looking at you.) Yes, Jabber is becoming much more common as a basis IM networks, but it's rarely used strictly "as-is," as opposed to screwing it all up a-la-Facebook, such that generic, multi-IM clients are never "problem-free" when trying to use "Jabber" via those networks...and having more and more private entities with draconian views of "openness" wanting and inventing their own networks really only makes things worse.

I long for the days when text-only messaging (with possible data, voice, and video OPTIONS) will cease to be expensive, fractious, and (to greatly simplify the issue) buggy, and will become as easy to work with as good-old-fashioned telephones used to be--or as close to it as a human interface will allow. If some "open" method truly gains overwhelming traction in its own right, and phone companies somehow don't charge your limbs of to use it, we'll get a chance to see such an illusive, magical beast as this. Until then, I suspect we're stuck in "IM/SMS purgatory," with no "paddle" available for this particular "creek."

Of course, only a global lack of manual digits or a complete ban on text messaging of any kind will prevent people from using it very stupidly. Oh, well.

Carriers own fault. Driving customers away.

[Anonymous Coward]

Carriers only have themselves and their greed to blame for pushing their customers to other platforms. I prefer SMS and I don't like CreepyBook at all but the appearance of being free still beats blatantly being ripped off.

Not the case in France (and I guess some parts of

[Anonymous Coward]

Here for less than 20€ a month (~26$) you get unlimited calls on any house or mobile phone, and unilimted texting.
For 2€ you have 1 hour and 60 sms per month...
People text everywhere, anytime, not unusual to send/receive more than 100 per day.
I know no one that uses facebook for IM...

Hope you have a good data plan.

[dietdew7]

It seems that there is a new update to Facebook a couple of times a week. Each update is about 6.5 mega bytes a pop. I really despise software that needs to update this frequently.

Re:Hope you have a good data plan.

[Anonymous Coward]

What update? It is a web site. The pages are about 30Kbytes in size....
Or did you install some app on your machine (what advantage does that have over the normal or mobile web site, which loads up pretty instantly?)

Re:If they were smart. And greedy.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have been able to do that since the beginning, it's just not the only way.

Re:Not the case in France (and I guess some parts

[clickclickdrone]

Yep. I've just started a new contract. Free HTC One X (list price about GBP500), 5,000 texts, 500 mins voice, unlimited data and free calls on same carrier - GBP29 a month. Most people I know use sms constantly and for everything. Email on phones is just to check it and very occassionally reply.

carriers and skype...

[Eth1csGrad1ent]

Facebook and the death of texting is one thing, but I'm still amazed that Skype hasn't absolutely destroyed the revenue of carriers everywhere.
I mean sure, they get the data - but VOIP and Skype are infinitely cheaper than paying per call

It seem we finally all got the video phones that sci-fi has been throwing in our faces for years, and the world went "meh..."

Re:carriers and skype...

[Dan541]

I've only used video calling twice in the past 10 years. I believe the last video call I made (on the phone, not with skype or equivalent) was in 2004.

Well, there's a reason for that

[jht]

Like it or not, carriers bring no value-add to the table. All they do now is provide pipes. They were able to charge outrageous fees for text messaging before because there were pretty much no alternatives for instant connections - despite the actual cost of SMS being virtually nil.

Now that we have BBM, iMessage, Facebook Messenger, etc., there's a host of alternatives that work just fine and only use minuscule squirts of data to connect. The future is integrated apps like Apple's Messages - it uses SMS, but switches to IMessage if it's available. And eventually it (and the like) will connect via whatever the first/best message alternative it has - only falling back to SMS if all else fails.

Dumb pipes it is.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, it's Timothy again.

What an asshat.

price check

[p51d007]

No, what would usually happen is when they would scan an item, it wouldn't ring up, so the clerk would get on the intercom store wide and say "I need a price check on Kotex Stay Free Minipads" and everyone would start looking at the husband in line and snicker.

Phone with no "push email"?

[perpenso]

My roommate (who can well afford it) is trying to avoid the SMS tax on his pay as you go phone, so I have to email him if I want a timely response, and hope he's near a computer.

Near a computer? Phones that can do SMS and email are free with many plans these days. If "push emails" are supported by the phone the emails arrive relatively immediately, not when the user happens to check email. It doesn't seem terribly different than SMS in such a case.

Old News

[Anonymous Coward]

consoles are killing the pc gaming market, text messages are killing emails.

I have $5 unlimited texting on Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a $5 unlimited texting package from Verizon and I'm always paranoid when I interact with a rep that they will delete it from my account. Like unlimited data plans, these things were offered once and as time goes by fewer and fewer people remain grandfathered into them.

Re:I have $5 unlimited texting on Verizon

[AngryDeuce]

Yeah, I still have my $5 unlimited texting and my unlimited data, but my original Droid is really starting to feel it's age as newer apps become more and more processor intensive (not to mention the joy that is a battery that goes from full to almost dead at the drop of a hat) so I'm thinking I've got another 6 months or so before I end up having to get a new phone and thus fall under the new caps.

I'm seriously leaning towards dumping the plan and going back to a pay as you go dumbphone, though, as they are getting pretty fucking ridiculous with the monthly charges plus with the throttling bullshit that they imposed on me as a punishment for being a long-time Verizon customer that doesn't upgrade constantly (going on almost 10 years with them...thanks a lot for the appreciation of my business, you fuckheads at Verizon) I'm just getting closer and closer to saying fuck it all. As it is now I barely even actually talk on the phone (only to geriatric relatives), everything is email, SMS or IM, and I don't need a $500 phone and a $80/month plan to do those things, especially not once I pick up a tablet.

Re:I have $5 unlimited texting on Verizon

[Skuld-Chan]

If you buy your new phone at a Verizon store (not some discounter) they will grandfather your existing plan. I have unlimited data on my Galaxy Nexus :).

Re:I have $5 unlimited texting on Verizon

[Mass Overkiller]

I've had the same account from Verizon since when they were Bell Atlantic Wireless - with a modest price increase when the change over happened. That was 1997 maybe.. I've been grandfathered since then and have had four or five phones. Each time I get grandfathered in. I appreciate that. If not, there would be no way I'd pay $140/mo for wireless anything like my girlfriend does..

Re:I have $5 unlimited texting on Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

I was worried about my grandfathered unlimited data plan going away when I finally upgraded my D1 to a RAZR Maxx, but it didn't happen. Still have the unlimited plan. According to the Verizon rep, the unlimited plan will remain in perpetuity unless I delete the account itself.

Re:I have $5 unlimited texting on Verizon

[shmlco]

Or upgrade to a new, subsidized phone.

A great way to sell data.

[Dzimas]

There was a story recently claiming that the majority of Facebook logins are mobile. If that is indeed the case, then the telcos are big winners, because soccer moms finally have a reason to upgrade their old flip phones.Most of them are choosing iPhones or Android handsets that come with $60+ data-enabled plans and multi-year contracts.

T-mobile: $50/month: unlimited talk, text, data

[Qubit]

Seriously, who hasn't switched to the $50/month all-you-can-eat prepaid plan?

Okay, so there are some plans that are a bit cheaper, but this plan is ideal because
1) The price is low enough for most working people
2) It's unlimited, so you don't have to worry about going over some month and owing them $180 or more

Yes, there are still a lot of problems with the telecos, but simple mobile voice/text service for a non-insane price seems to be a "solved problem".

Re:T-mobile: $50/month: unlimited talk, text, data

[samwichse]

Yep, and you save 5$ a month by dropping the stupid crap unlimited texting.

They will swear up and down it can't be done, but if you continue to insist, they will drop it.

Google voice: free texting (I use it to talk to my couple friends that use an iphone or dumbphone). Everyone else already has an android phone with google talk (a couple on the pay-as-you-go plans on Virgin).

I refuse to pay a monthly fee for that BS they get for FREE.
Sam

yet another plagiarized slashot summary

[bcrowell]

What is it with slashdot submitters who don't understand how to use quotation marks around something that someone else wrote, and to attribute quotes properly?

Convenient

[Darinbob]

This is convenient. I never really got into text messaging, too cumbersome on old phones, no smart phone, and it costs way too much. Now if it's dying I won't have to deal with it anymore.

MQTT

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook Messenger uses MQTT which is an open transport and makes the messaging way easier on a mobile device than the old web interface mechanism.

Cough....

[way2trivial]

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20050811/41139012.html

The law in Russia is extremely conservative compared with that in the United States. Russians can only buy smoothbore hunting rifles of minimum 80 centimeters, gas pistols, or revolvers shooting rubber bullets. Safe use of this arsenal for five years allows purchase of a twin rifle or carbine. Stub-barreled firearms are a taboo for Russian citizens.

Calling BS on the cost of SMS

[Aqualung812]

Therefore, it is a scarce resource.

Are you honestly saying that a provider had to add resources to a cell tower solely to add SMS capacity, not data or voice?

Re:Calling BS on the cost of SMS

[Creepy]

I think they're saying if they didn't charge for it, demand would oversaturate the SMS/MMS data band. Of course, that misses the point - texting is dying because the providers continue to charge inordinately high fees for a service that is free on the internet. I used a pinger # for years to avoid having to pay texting (why pay for texting and data when you can get texting free?), but recently I lost that because everyone just sends a facebook message now and I hadn't used the pinger # in 3 months (I renewed it twice, then let it drop).

Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to

[Anonymous Coward]

As usual only apply to USA. In other countries where to have a data plan costs an arm and an leg, SMS is still the king.

Good

[Charcharodon]

Sooner or later these companies are going to figure out something, that competion means you either give us more for the same price or give us the same for less.

The fact that they even charge for txt message is a joke considering it costs them practically nothing to give.

They are going to like even less when people finally wise up and stop buying a seperate phone for each family member and just give their children Wi-Fi devices.

Carrires are making any ways ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Carriers are making money from data bandwidth consumed for all such apps being used as replacement of SMS.

It had to be good for SOMETHING

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have use facebook because I've had email, IRC and web servers of my own since the mid nineties. I always wondered why anyone would want it since it brings absolutely nothing to the table. But if it hurts greedy telcos - and what other kind is there? - then I'm in favour of it.

Re:Pay as you go vs Dumbphone

[TaoPhoenix]

AT&T slid my iPhone into the GoPhone structure on AT&T. Pay as you go - I don't talk to anyone so the $100 blocks work well for me for a long time. But it's still a SmartPhone and I just go to McDonalds with the free wifi to do any Phone-y App stuff.

But all my real computing is on my home machine anyway. I only use about 5 phone apps.

Re:wait for may 19 / your xmpp day

[wertigon]

Except that Facebook IS XMPP, and so is MSN these days. They just don't federate with rest of world. :P

Facebook is killing what?

[chrismcb]

Don't most people pay the phone carriers so they can access facebook? Text messaging is like $5 a month, data plans are like $50.

Garunteed Delivery

[MindStalker]

There is also the issue of Guaranteed Delivery. I've found more and more SMS messages seem to get dropped on the wire and don't make it to the persons phone. Facebook messaging has a higher % chance of making it to the recipient.

Fucking liar

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking liar.

I fear the freedom loving gun nuts far more than I fear the government or even the criminals.

What shall I do with an extra $2000?

[bill_mcgonigle]

I'm paying $30/mo with PagePlus for their 1200-minute plan. I bought a reconditioned LG nv2 off eBay for $60. It gets about 3 days on a charge, and when the battery starts to wear out, the replacement is $13 from Amazon Marketplace.

That said, MMS messages to FBOOK stopped working on or after April 27th of this year. The smartphone I'd like is $700, and a data plan is about $25/mo more. It's not worth it to me to spend nearly $1000 this year to post pictures to Facebook (their e-mail gateway might still work, but my phone gloms on a huge disclaimer about QuickTime which is obnoxious - haven't tried to edit the ROM yet). Oh, speaking of which, you need to change one '00' to '20' and a couple text strings on the phone to get Network Manager to use the phone for 3G tethering. Verizon's provisioning is broken.

Anyway, my wife hit us for a $285 phone bill with Verizon one month on a credit plan. Even she can't use 1200 minutes, though!

Text message cann't die

[Anonymous Coward]

SMS text marketing has been one of the most effective channels of direct marketing. Recent researches have shown that SMS is capable of reaching the mass market with better success rate. Recent reports suggest that 98 percent of all text messages are read by the recipient – and 90 percent within the first three minutes.
(http://www.txtimpact.com/SMS-marketing.asp)

wave of the future

[Anonymous Coward]

they have this app now, where instead of texting people, you can actually have voice messaging with them, in real time!