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Sep 10, 09 - 01:05 pm Comment from: Jay-Z

Data is data, whether it be text for SMSs, voices for phone calls, or what we traditionally think of as data for email and the Internet. It would be refreshing for carriers to price it as such.

Sep 10, 09 - 01:09 pm Comment from: silverwarloc

@Jay-Z: you make too much damn sense. That's the problem. Hence, the telcos will not adopt it.

Just imagine the monstrous competitive advantage a carrier would enjoy by offering free text messaging.

Sep 10, 09 - 01:19 pm Comment from: The Other Steve

Well that's not exactly true. It cost money to collect the extra fees and deal with parents that want to know why their phone bill is so high.

Q--Why am I paying a toll for this road?
A--Because we have to pay the toll collector.

Sep 10, 09 - 01:20 pm Comment from: Cubert

I'm just glad AT&T;has finally allowed the iPhone to enter the 21st century with MMS.

How embarrassing.

I do not believe the charges are going away any time soon. Text messages to the cellular service providers are like french fries to the fast food industry. The delicious extra that is so desirable as to be essential, yet almost entirely profit.

Anyone charging a markup of 98% can only be scammer

- unless the product is as rare as a Michelangelo...

People. Revolt!

Sep 10, 09 - 01:45 pm Comment from: blah blah blah...

DRMSSDB is the WINNER!!! Could not of said it any better than that, it's the cold hard truth.

Sep 10, 09 - 01:45 pm Comment from: Mac Daddy

Some fast-food places put their soda machines out where we can serve ourselves, and have unlimited refills (at least while we are there chowing down on our double cheezy greezy burgers). That Coke they charge $1.89 for really only costs them a nickel, so they still make a profit even with the refills. Some people still order a large, even though they could just buy a small and get up one more time to refill it (extra profit for the burger place).

Seems like text messages are already starting to go that way, with the unlimited options offered. The average teen mentioned above, with 2,899 text messages per month, is getting a pretty good deal with a $20/month unlimited text plan. It comes out to about 0.7 cent each.

How the hell somebody could go through nearly 3,000 texts is beyond me, tho' ...

OK OK it's a markup of 500%...

Sep 10, 09 - 01:52 pm Comment from: blah blah blah...

There's nothing to revolt about, they own the service, they make the price, we choose if we want it, TXT is not an essential. If there should be a revolt, it should be against the Movie Theatre business, NOW THERE'S A SCAM!!!

if data is data then why do we pay separate rates for phone calls AND internet access? its all just data now right?

Sep 10, 09 - 02:00 pm Comment from: TowerTone

CLIQ, bitch!

http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/Consumer-Product-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/ci.Motorola-CLIQ-US-EN.services

Sep 10, 09 - 02:02 pm Comment from: MidWest Mac

I say bandwidth is bandwidth.

Sell it to me at a reasonable price and I'll worry about what I do with it.

Sep 10, 09 - 02:14 pm Comment from: Erk

how long? as long as we keep paying for it..

Sep 10, 09 - 02:18 pm Comment from: thom

This has always enraged me. The carriers are treating us like we are idiots. It may cost them 1/3 of a penny to text, but the alternative is a phone call which cost them MUCH more. They should give discounts for text usage. Someone start a petition or something.

Admit it, frothing right wingers. You want the government to step in and regulate this blatant SMS theft. Don't deny it. Deep down, you know you want it.

Sep 10, 09 - 02:33 pm Comment from: Gregg Thurman

"How much longer will the carriers’ great SMS ripoff last?"

As long as their customers continue to pay the price.

Teens should have their SMS yanked! And their damn cell phones too!

Sep 10, 09 - 02:45 pm Comment from: Gordon Horne

I can see a justification for carriers to charge more for voice calls. The connection has to be persistent and real time. That takes more resources than an equal amount of data that is composed on one machine, sent in pieces, and assembled on another machine.

Of course, the carriers charge the most for the services that are the least demanding on resources and therefore cost them the least to provide. They are the newest services and customers have the least expectations of what they should cost.

Sep 10, 09 - 02:50 pm Comment from: TheConfuzed1

@ Rob--

Don't be an idiot.

This isn't a political discussion, but if you want to make it one, at least know which side to take!

Republicans are for less government.

The government shouldn't interfere with capitalism. Like it or not, as long ad people continue to pay, they will continue to charge, an rightfully so.

A product's value is only as much as a buyer is willing to pay. In other words, if you're paying for it, it's worth it.

If you don't think it's worth it, then don't pay for it!

It's as simple as that; vote with your wallet. You may bitch about it all the way, but if you continue to pay, you are justifying the charge!

This practice will persist until competition forces them to change. Possibly a service that uses the data connection of the iPhone that can still integrate with the SMS system of normal phones? Twitter would sort of work, but seems too public to me.

and in this case, Adam Smith would argue, the invisible hand should adjust prices for text messaging downward. Except that the market is imperfect; all cellular companies are NOT created equal; they don't have the same coverage patterns, they offer incentives to keep you tied to their networks (in-network calls free), and until recently, there was no phone number portability. Whether the companies collude to maintain SMS tariffs artificially high or not, the fact remains that it happens because it can happen; there are sufficient barriers to entry in the cellphone industry that the odds of an new company establishing itself in the market are, by my reckoning, somewhere between slim and none.

It will be interesting to see what happens with Cricket mobile - $35/month for unlimited voice and text.

Sep 10, 09 - 03:12 pm Comment from: John

I'd done the math on this ages ago, and every time I get a text message (and that costs me--even though I can't turn the service off!) I get royally pissed.

I even talked with an ATT rep at a local store about this, and he said the "reason" was that ATT routes every single text message through one data center they have, and the servers are over-stressed, so they need to charge a lot in order to keep texting traffic low. I called BS on the guy in the store, but obviously he's a low level employee and can't affect change.

It's really astounding people are paying $.15-.20 per message, or $30/month to send tiny snippits of data that should be part of the unlimited data plan. Astounding.

BTW, now that AIM does background push, I have told people to IM my phone number. I get texting for free (well, included in unlimited data charges) that way.

Don't be an idiot.

This isn't a political discussion, but if you want to make it one, at least know which side to take!

Republicans are for less government.

LOL! I see my comment went right over your head. Try reading it again (or several times, if necessary), and see if the light bulb comes on.

If you don't think it's worth it, then don't pay for it!

Except, oh wait, I get charged even when I RECEIVE a text message. Explain to me how I'm supposed to not pay for something I have no control over?

How's your free market working out now, wingnuts?

There is no doubt that the margin is high - but there are also some additional costs involved. In most countries, local laws require telcos to store text messages more or less indefinitely - that requires an administrative function, hard drive space and tapes. Its not an inconsiderable cost...

Sep 10, 09 - 05:02 pm Comment from: Predrag

..."- but there are also some additional costs involved"

Not really. In 2009, it is expected that some 2.9 trillion SMS messages will be send GLOBALLY. Even if every single one of them was at full 160 characters, it would take all of around 450TB of storage space to hold entire year's worth of entire planet's SMS messages. 450TB worth of hard drives fits comfortably into a small data centre, or a large server closet. Tape drives and tapes would presumably take even less space.

There is no way cost is meaningful at all. I'm with DRMSSDB on this one. SMS is french fries. Costs next to nothing, but is so much desirable, they can charge as much as they wish. Interesting how the average charge for a single SMS doesn't vary all that much around the world (with a very few exceptions).

It will be practically impossible to break that pricing model. After all, if they did, our voice calling (or regular data plans) would immediately go up significantly. Carriers would have to make up somehow for the lost profits.

First, the premise - 3,000 SMS per month for the "average" teen - is not really plausible.

Second, even if it is correct, anyone who's texting that much and doesn't have an unlimited plan for $5-10 deserves to get a bill for hundreds of dollars (and then have Daddy take away their phone).

Whether it's illogically treated as a separate charge for data isn't the point - add up your total data charges and decide if you want to pay it or not.

It ended for me several months ago - Google Voice!

TextFree for $6 in app store. Text all freaking day long, and with push you get popup notifications. No, thank you AT&T;, I won't pay $15 a month for 1500 messages. Ridiculoso.

Sep 11, 09 - 08:54 am Comment from: HazMatt

Rob, I'm sorry but I don't think you properly understand the conservative mindset. Paying 20¢ for incoming text messages that you have no control over may be as frustrating as hell, but my conservative free-market mind STILL does not want government stepping in.

Just because I happen to be a consumer does not mean that I am willing to abandon my principles just to save a buck.

When it's all said and done, the people have, by and large, accepted and validated the current pricing structure. The market IS working, and the cell phone companies are successfully making a profit—woops, is that a bad word?

And besides, some of the other comments here are right; given the right climate in the marketplace, a competitor can cleanup the competition with alternative text messaging options. "Bah" mentioned the app TextFree. "market failure" mentioned an attractive alternative plan from Cricket Mobile.

So Rob, I implore you to think outside the box and stop running to government with all of your problems.

HazMatt

Sep 11, 09 - 08:59 am Comment from: HazMatt

"Rob" says:
"Except, oh wait, I get charged even when I RECEIVE a text message. Explain to me how I'm supposed to not pay for something I have no control over?"

That is a valid criticism I suppose, which I didn't directly answer above. I would think that the only way to effectively combat this would be to complain directly to your provider. I might actually do this… keep a log of all unsolicited incoming text messages that I get charged for and dispute those charges each billing cycle until they offer an alternative.

Just thinking out loud on this one…

HazMatt