Senator opens inquiry into rising text messaging rates
By Donald Melanson 
posted Sep 10th 2008 12:31PM
posted Sep 10th 2008 12:31PM
The increasingly high cost of text messaging has already caused a bit of a stir in Canada, and it looks like Democratic Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin is concerned with the situation in the US as well, with him now opening an inquiry to attempt to get the carriers to explain themselves. Apparently, Kohl is a bit puzzled as to why some customers are now paying 20 cents per message when they paid just 10 cents in 2005, a period that Kohl notes just happens to overlap with some consolidation in the wireless industry, when the number of national carriers shrunk from six to four. Those carriers, as you might expect, aren't saying much just yet, with Sprint only going as far as to say that it looks forward to "responding to the Senator's inquiry about the text messaging options we offer our customers and we will fully cooperate with his request," and the rest saying even less.
Don't text.
and when you get unsolicited texts you do what?
"and when you get unsolicited texts you do what?"
You call the carrier and complain. I have done that with t-mobile a couple times and both times they just added like 20 free text messages to my plan to cover it.
Honestly when you can get unlimited text for about $10-15 extra a month which is probably $5-10 more than the base level plan. Long distance on a land line is pretty expensive if you don't just pay the additional $5-10 to get unlimited.
So lesson of the day pay an extra $5-10 bucks and get unlimited it'll save you the pain of paying $20-30 bucks in overages...
Huh?
@Jagster
I canceled My T-Mobile Contract (early Term) under the audacity of them raising their text messaging rates in July. I paid not one red cent for early termination either with the argument that the rates were ridiculous! (I also did not have a Text messaging plan, however, I do send/receive a few texts). (Line 3 on the Contract)
Correspond to:
T-Mobile Wireless
ATTN: Customer Relations
PO Box 37380
Albuquerque, NM 87176-7380
FAX: 813-353-6545
If that helps just one other person save some non-needed BS from Customer Service department - then i have done my job . . . .
Then don't comment. Texting is here to stay, whether you like it or not.
I send over 9000 text messages each month, and have for some time. People ask me how I get work done, but I find that it's more efficient and less tangential sometimes to just stick to the point and coordinate in the space of 160 characters rather than have a full-blown phone conversation.
Texting doesn't _replace_ calling, it merely supplements it.
The fact that I can't opt out of unsolicited texts screams money trap to me. Even if I turn texting off on my service plans entirely (at+t) I still receive text messages from anyone who wants to send 'em. Calling up and complaining is only a band-aid. It doesn't fix the underlying problem.
Besides that, why do texts costs 10c or more anyway? They use way less bandwidth than a minute of talk time. Its just a steep fee to force people into yet another monthly plan.
Thank goodness my work uses Blackberry Messenger on our phones. it falls under data transfer and is unlimited, not to mention easier to manage conversations.
So apparently you get low ranked if you actually _use_ the service we're talking about in the article? SMS?
That makes sense not.
The new opacity-proportional vote system is annoying too. Now I'm squinting to read everything. Great.
I can't believe you folks across the pond have to pay for messages received. Really, that's just ridiculous. No wonder that cell phone adoption was so slow in the US...
@nerdtalker:
Blind much?
how the hell are you getting unsolicited texts? you obviously put your number out there somewhere for them to find, so it's really you're own fault. I've had the same number since 2003 and have never once received an "unsolicited" text.
@Ghen
You would think that paying 19.99 for unlimited blackberry service gets you txt because it's data and not talk but you'd be wrong. I am with T-mobile and I have to pay 45 for my 1000 talk minutes plus 19.99 for my unlimited blackberry data service but for text messaging...i was charged .15 a txt unless i buy a package of 400 txts @ 4.99 a month. I hope this guy Kohl can make them answer for this outrageous money making scheme.
Ok, so why did everyone rank kccboy2004 so low? If you think something is too expensive, DON'T DO IT. How hard is that? Or do you feel entitled to cheap text messages?
Now if you want to talk about getting charged for receiving text messages, that's another issue entirely. And you know what, not all cell-phone companies charge you for every text you receive. Hell, one of the big pre-paid cellphone companies only charge you for messages that you open, and do not charge you for messages that they send out.
But if it costs more to send a message than you would like, don't do it. Find another carrier.
wow, is it just me or (firefox) are low ranked comments faded???
@Rocketboy
"But if it costs more to send a message than you would like, don't do it. Find another carrier."
That's the problem right there, all the carriers do it because there's no real competition. In a true free market the cost for SMS would trend towards the actual cost which is basically nothing ($0.00), competition among carriers would have one carrier offering SMS for less than the others to gain customers and then the other carriers would either match or beat each carrier's prices until everybody started offering free, or extremely cheep messaging. The problem is that the cellphone industry is not a free market but an oligopoly - a market dominated by a small number of companies. As such there isn't any true competition amongst cellphone carries, especially regarding SMS. The evidence of this is that SMS rates have only gone up and that price increases from one carrier are often matched a short time later by the others. My belief is that this is due to either overt collusion, where the carriers communicate with one another, or tacit collusion where they just monitor one another's prices to keep them the same and match price increases. The former isn't very likely as it would be extremely illegal while the latter, though possibly legal, is certainly cause for investigation.
A free market would dictate that the price of a commodity that is unlimited and costs nothing would trend to zero. In an Oligopoly the price of the same commodity would stay the same amongst all carriers and even tend to increase, which is exactly what we see with SMS.
I hope that this inquiry has legs as text messages cost more per byte than receiving images from the Hubble Space Telescope. In fact, my guess is that SMS is the most expensive form of communication in the history of mankind.
FYI. text in most country in asia region cost so little 100 message for 0.5$. or if you fall in some plan, you could basically text for free. Free market? maybe, maybe not in US.
its all related to the high cost of oil.
Just got out of your high school economics class? In a 'true' free market, the carriers will charge what ever the hell they can get people to pay for it. If you keep paying high prices for text messages, you only have yourself to blame. There are cheaper services that have text messages. Tracphone (sp?) for one. And you don't have to pay when someone sends you a message, only if you read it. So if you really are fed up with the big carrier's prices for texting, go somewhere else.
"A free market would dictate that the price of a commodity that is unlimited and costs nothing would trend to zero."
That is so pure theory, and not real world that I have to laugh. Again a free market would dictate that the cost of something is directly in relation to how much people are willing to spend on something. You've all agreed to pay high rates. You only have yourself to blame.
Don't worry, I'll be more than happy with this being low ranked as well. You might as well low-rank me for calling 9/11 truthers idiots as well, I won't be sad.
this guy is awesome!
And you can tell Senator Kohl how awesome he is by texting him at 77744.*
*$1.99 per compliment. You will be automatically signed up to send Senator Kohl monthly praise for a fee of $9.99 unless you cancel this offer by texting the word "Cancel" to 24212.
maybe his teenage daughter created a humongous phone bill for him by texting? :D
Let's hope he moves onto ISP's next. Why in this day and age bandwidth caps and throttling are becoming more common.
If ISPs want to restrict that stuff, fine, but they need to make more options with higher limits available, for a (reasonably) higher price.
but the senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity
That is ridiculous.
Text a lot.
Even 10c is a ripoff given the hilariously small amount of data (bytes) each txt requires. (Even with syn/ack and whatever additional overhead)
What's even better is that SMS (at least before it gets to the MSMQ) isn't an IP network. There is no message data integrity checking, no assurance that texts reach their intended destination, and differing standards for how long messages are to be stored in different carrier's MSMQs before being magically erased. The whole protocol is ripped from GSM for CDMA networks, and it's literally the system originally designed to send "voicemail waiting" notifications to client, in fact, that's exactly what it is.
An even bigger and more outlandish part of this story is that both the sender and recipient ultimately are charged (or docked, if you're on an allowance) for the message. I know that this isn't really legitimate as well, and is somewhat of a gray area.
Honestly, what we need here is a whole new IP-routed SMS-like protocol which works over data (EvDo or 3G HSDPA, whatever), natively. SMS requires too much proprietary equipment and routing hardware which a few exclusive ODMs charge fortunes for, leading carriers to underbuild and overstrain their switching. I routinely notice lag, missing messages, e.t.c. with my message volume.
EXACTLY. Why the hell isn't text simply included in data plans? Of all the data and voice you may send and receive with your phone, text messages are surely among the smallest. Having separate and expensive plans just for texting is beyond absurd. Imagine if you your ISPs charged you for individual email plans and anything above you plan was like 15 cents per email. No one would put up with it, yet cell phone users have taken this texting shit for as along as it has been around.
@nerdtalker:
This is essentially what has happened in Japan. There are three major carriers there. In the past, their respective SMS networks were connected, but a barrage of spam SMS forced the companies to close them up, so you can only send SMS in-network. This means that MMS, which does run over the packet network, became the dominant text messaging technology. With some carriers, small MMS (
The rates went up because people were willing to pay for it. Personally I racked up ridiculous charges for text messaging before I got around to changing my plan to better suit my needs.
It really is crap, though, and seems reverse of most other business models. I'm sure the number of text messages sent during that time has skyrocketed, and yet when in other situations more consumers = lower cost, for some reason more people texting = higher costs.
What they should really look into if they're interested in gouging is ring tones. It's ridiculous...I don't know why anybody actually pays for them.
I hope this guy isn't like Jim Pretince who angrily told Telus and Bell to remove the incoming 15 cents text cost.
Then suddenly changes his position to tell Canadians to switch Carriers...
The senator is worth over $200M. You have to love him for going after ten cent texts.
Txt message rates are ridiculous. Why is this not covered in "data" plans? Unfortunately since text messaging is popular the carriers see this is a great section to make a profit so we're paying extra for this service that should be grouped in with our data plans.
Isn't everything, including voice, essentially "data"? *boggle*
Texts are too easy to count and charge for. Try to get that bone away from the carriers when they see individual people texting over 5000 times per month. It's not a matter of SHOULD. They make more doing it this way instead of raising the plan cost. They won't stop until someone makes them.
The purchase of AT&T Wireless by Cingluar started this whole deal. The rest of the companies are playing catch-up.
That deal should not have gone through, for anti-trust reasons. Once that one was complete, all of the other consolidation seemed small (and reasonable).
They need to go back to that purchase and determine what went wrong.
i love texting, i even text if its the same price as a phone call, its just an awesome way to deliver bad news and not have to explain, lol
Ha ha... Well played! : )
:D u have aids lol
Texting is almost impossible on my rotary-dial cell phone. I wish I had paid the extra $20 to get touch-tone.
texting is over rated, its all about the pager
Well I don't think I pay a lot for texting.
Our Family plan from US Cellular is only $20 for all 4 of us for unlimited texting!!!
Also live in Wisconsin lol, but first time a democrat did something useful!
$20 is cheap for texting?
If you paid $20 in overage charges to your ISP because of text documents, you'd probably have to send a few hundred billion pages of text.
@ sean: read what he said. he said $20 for 4 people! that's only $5 per person.
You americans are so lucky, if you want to text here in canada you first have to be analy raped... it sucks
I text so much I have to sit on one of those hemmeroid donuts.
I like this senator. Text messaging should be bloody free, considering it uses a network that's nearly defunct and costs the carriers nothing to operate. Charging people for texting is questionable at best, and raising the prices for texting is borderline criminal. It would be nice to see them held responsible for once.
Prices aren't based on how much trouble it takes to provide the service (well sometimes they are but this isn't)
They're based on how much the company can charge the consumer to get the most money.
Use it and pay it, or don't use it and don't pay it.
I remember back in 2003 when I first signed up with Verizon they had a $5 unlimited text package. Whatever happened to the good old days?
What I remember is the good old days (2003, 2004?) when AT&T (before they bought up Cingular) used to give you all of your incoming text messages F-R-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E. I questioned them on this multiple times before signing up again, and they ASSURED ME that this was still the case. They outright lied to me to get me to sign up. Typical sales. When you can't get the customer on your own merits, lie like there's no tomorrow, make promises you won't keep, and make sure you get them to sign the contract. You know, just like the politicians do. :)
It's because they want everybody to purchase the unlimited text messaging plans.
Yup, you hit it head on.
I, for one, refuse to pay for a texting plan because of how expensive it is. If it was cheaper or included in your minutes I'd text a lot. They should at least count one text as half a minute or a minute.
I hate the high SMS rates as mush as anyone but does anybody really think this is the best use of this guys time? We have bigger problems in this country than worrying about a few cents spent on text messaging. SMS rates are not problem like the high gas prices we are paying, our rising food costs, skyrocketing health care costs, etc. Why is this guy wasting his time?
How about he gets the gas company's (Exxon, Shell, BP) to explain why we are still paying $3.75/gallon for gas when oil is $102/barrel? At $102/barrel, regular unleaded should be about $2.65/gallon, we are paying 40% more than we should right now. They had no problems raising the gas to over $4 when oil was at $150/barrel but want to lallygag on bringing the price back down and this guy is worried about 10-cent text messages.
you n00b its not about that, it is a big issue, think about how much money those phone companys are making off us
Gas prices?! Are you kidding me? Take the freaking bus if you're worried about gas. Nobody has to drive but everybody has to text. Your priorities are very screwed up.
@Jagster
Of course they are lagging behind bringing the price back down, they had already proven the market will pay $4 a gallon for gas. Granted at that price demand has declined, but that doesn't mean people aren't still going to buy it. On top of that they have already dragged BP and all of the other oil giants up to capital hill for a few rounds of the blame game and what did that get us? Where I am at I have seen gas down to $3.39 in the last few days, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it to go down below $3.00 any time soon. Even with oil declining roughly 33% from its high point to its current price, gas has only declined around 11%. If you think the government is going to step in and do whats right for consumers, just look back at BPs record profits the last few quarters and look at what the government has done for us so far.
I agree that this guy needs something better to worry about, but isn't that the problem with the world today? We can care about little things because our lives are comfortable enough:) For example, you complain to your phone company about one or 2 unsolicited texts...What is that, a 2-hour call for a quarter or two? :-D
Also, you're looking at the cost of crude oil. There is also the cost of refining, and a lot of middlemen in between. And there's crap in it that you don't actually use in cars...If you compare this 40% increase to other margins of raw materials to finished products, I think you'll find it to be quite reasonable.
we have a lot of senators, 100, and a lot of folks in the house of reps, 435 if I remember correctly. Having 1 of those folks to look into this issue is important and a good thing. When you have a crisis, most folks handle that, but you still need some folks to handle mundane things like consumer protection. Personally, I would share your feelings if like half the Senate was involved, but 1 guy, heck, I think that's mighty fine.
I sincerely doubt that the cell phone company's are making $120,000,000,000 (120 billion) in *profit* each year off of text messages. And just get a text plan if you use SMS that often. Every time I fill my car up, I'm *overpaying* the gas station enough to cover 100 SMS messages or a unlimited text plan ($20). That's each and every time I fill up. And this is happening to every single American out there that drives, not just the few that text more than a couple times per month. So I would say the SMS issue is relatively petty.
" you complain to your phone company about one or 2 unsolicited texts...What is that, a 2-hour call for a quarter or two?"
Maybe if I had AT&T but not with T-Mobile. With T-Mo, I get a rep usually in under a minute or 2 and for me it's about the principle of it (yes people still fight for principles). Inbound SMS should be free since the user has no say in who they get them from or how often and the sender is already paying, so in that case if I get unwanted text messages I want the cell company to cover it and T-Mo goes above that and covers some of my text messages too. I really could not care less about the few cents (or how much they want to charge), but the fact that they charge for inbound SMS is the issue worth fighting since the user has no control over that. Again, principles. If SMS was a necessity in life or our society, then it would be a little different, but it's not.
no not 120 billion but its up there.
according to a press release issued from at&t in january:
AT&T reported record revenue and profit results for the fourth quarter of this year. Sales for Q4 2007 were $30.1 billion, up from $15.9 million in Q4 2006. Profit climbed to $3.1 billion, up from $1.9 billion a year ago.
The company attributed the growth mainly to its wireless business, which brought in $11.4 billion in sales, up 16%, and net income of $1.9 billion, up 44%.
hmm lets see...they also reported they have 70 million subscribers, if even half of them had a text messaging plan at $15/month think of the profits. especially since they used to not charge much for text messages. im still on an old legacy attws plan which has free incoming texts and the rates USED to be 5cents to send a text, but they even charge us oldies 10cents now. i dont even want to talk about the new at&t wireless' plans...iirc they charge 10c to send and 10c to receive. total ripoff.
Why can't different people tackle different issues at the same time?
Judge: "And who does the prosecution call as its first witness?"
Kohl: "idk, my bff Rose."
lol
Nice...beat me to it there. :P
This sounds like a case of a ridiculous cellphone bill due to his teenage daughter.
Aaaand that was meant as a reply to Jagster... I wasn't gunning for the back-to-back funny intentionally.
Look,
If you are stupid enough to still text when they charge up to 20 cents for them, then they by all means they will keep charging.
If no one text message because it was expensive, they would lower the price.
There isn't any ripoff. They realize plenty enough customers will pay the premium to use this anyway, so why should they lose out on making money off of it? It also allows them to lower prices on other items that aren't as popular.
You've never dealt with a cell provider in Canada, have you? If they weren't screwing us on text fees they'd just figure out another wacky access fee to slap on the bill.
Typical Bill:
$7.08 System Access Fee
$2.20 911 Access Fee
$4.00 411 Surcharge
$8.00 Dataplan Access Fee
$1.45 Paper+Stamp to send you this bill
etc etc
Grand Total: $74.51 without even making a call
Sweet Jesus!
Who are you with?
Without making a call I'm paying $35/month for essentially the plan...
and back in the day i had free unlimited text messaging and their little mobile internet (which sucked, all text) for free. why does it cost now? oh, cuz they can.
oh, that was with t-mobile btw
People are Greedy, thats why they are raising the prices. Nothing like some good old corporate greed to get those high tech CEO's all wet and bothered.
Actually, the only thing I'd probably press for is free incoming text messages. I should not be charged for a message I did not ask to receive. I won't pay for the $5/month or whatever plans because I don't send enough text messages to warrant that, but I should not have to pay anything when someone else sends me a text message and I don't respond in kind.
The companies have a right to make a profit and are choosing an area in which they can do so easily. If you don't like it, stop paying for a text message option and stop sending text messages. If you're a heavy user, the plans make sense. For me, it makes no sense to pay anything for it as I don't use them.
I'd possibly consider it if there were a $2/month "family" option with some low # of messages, but even then it would be hard to justify. Yes, the actual cost is low, but people are willing to pay for it.
Yes, the companies do have a right to make a profit. They do NOT have a right to engage in a trust and inflate prices beyond what the market would typically bear. Competition is what keeps the greed that drives capitalism from spiraling out of control and collapsing on itself. If that competition disappears, bad things happen to the consumer. The cellular industry is already ripe for abuses like that, considering how difficult and expensive it can be for the consumer to exercise their right to choose.
When the price of a good or service jumps so dramatically in such a short period of time without a clear, external driving force, it reeks of collusion. It should be investigated.
Because Corporations are set up to make money and people are GREEDY. Nothing like good old corporate greed to get Some CEO all et and bothered.
Text is 20 cents now? wow, talk about strategic way to make people pay the monthly fee of $10-$15 for unlimited texting. The question we should all be asking is why there are very limited plans to get? What ever happened to the good old make your own plan? Did those just fall out of existence?
I'm not talking for myself per se as I have an iPhone and have unlimited everything, but I'm talking about everyone else who has this problem and only want certain things and dont want to pay for the additional services they dont use. It's like cable/satelitte, half of the stuff I dont even want so why am I paying for it?
Just looked this guy up, he's pretty legit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Kohl
He even owns an NBA team, heh.
While we are at it, can we get him to question why new electronics are so expensive? Or jewelry? OR any other luxery item for that matter. While you could argue that cell phones have become a requirement for living these days, I don't think you can say the same for text messaging.
"Normal" bulk pricing rules don't apply to networks since the more traffic you have the slower everyone's connection, or some messages get dropped, forcing you to upgrade your networks to keep up, there by raising the cost to use said networks.
Either that, or "because they can" both are probably equally valid.
Better yet, ask him why my freakin taxes are so high, his salary is so high, and why does he not have something better to do then to investigate prices, which almost always does nothing.
I guess they ran out of athletes to talk to.
Ya know know I have to question the whole cost structure for text messsages... Data is data. Text messages are orders of magnitute cheaper to send over the airwaves than voice data and yet we pay orders of magnitute more to send them... Assuming a package of post-it-notes costs a dollar it would be like charging someone $400 each time they left a sticky note on someone's desk... (Oh but wait it gets better!!!) and charging the person getting the note the same $400! It's no wonder kids with more money than sense are the prime (but not only) users of these services! And don't even get me started on when the kids are texting (in class, while driving etc)!!!
they should respond to the inquiry with a series of text messages. the senator can opt out of receiving future messages(sent by hot telco executives who are looking to flirt with powerful legislators)* by calling up some backwater in hong-kong and waiting on hold for 2 or 3 hours, only to be disconnected and left to take it up with the baffling customer service maze at verizon.
What's really funny is I remember when txts were freee like in early 2000, heck in most 3rd world countries txt is free. The only reason they are charging anything for it is because us Americans will pay it..
americans are stupid
will fall for anything and everything
the only thing worse than a stupid american
is someone who actually gets it
and decides to do nothing
Ha. im on sprint. been a customer for like 8yrs. And i pay $7 for unlimited web and texting. Cell carriers will take advantage of any customer that doesnt know how to give it to them and demand a better deal.
DON'T TEXT and save the penguins!!!
Oh why can't I report, low rank, AND reply?
1) I agree that paying for incoming messages is rediculous. Could you imagine the mail man coming to the door asking for another 42 cents? The delivery was already payed for by the sender.
2) Why on my Family plan do I share the minutes, but when I get a texting plan it only applies to a single phone? Shouldn't I be able to share the texts just like the minutes. Why should I have to pay for two texting plans?
does anyone remember when text messages were free? or five cents a piece? yes? no? having to pay for them at all is ridiculous, but charging 20 cents a piece is just unconscionable on the part of the service providers
yes, that was somewhere between 1998-2000
If this senator wants to solve this then shutdown the FCC. They are the ones who monopolized the radio waves. They are the ones who said you have to pony up a billion dollars to "own" a sector of the radio spectrum.
My friend once calculated out the cost of the average text message, converted it to a cost per MB of data and it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $1300/MB. Pretty much its a complete rip off.
I wonder what those numbers are if instead of using an "average" text you just went ahead and said it used all 160 characters. Probably something still outrageous!!!
This is awesome and I hope he goes far! Text messaging rates (even for unlimited plans) are RIDICULOUS and I, as a consumer, refuse to use text messaging as a result. There are many alternatives to SMS that are free. After all, it is only a little piece of data, smaller than most data transmitted over my unlimited 3G plan.
Looks like I am living in the Cell Phone Heaven of the world.
Over here in India, we never had to pay for incoming SMS, only outgoing. For a while, incoming SMS were charged if the customer was on Roaming but now even that has been abolished.
We only pay for outgoings now - call & sms. Across the country.
Basic plans start at Rs. 250 upto Rs. 500/- (between USD 7 & USD 15) for lifetime free incoming calls (actually till the validity of the provider's license; 2021 AD for most.). Need to top-up with Rs. 50/- (about USD 1.25) outgoing talk-time every six months. Calls across India are typically Rs. 1/- per minute (max. Rs.2/-) and SMS start at 50 paise (max. Rs. 2/-). At today's rate, USD 1 = INR 44.
Some providers also provide SMS top-up which drops outgoing SMS rates to about 10 paise.
In general though, rates have seen an upward swing. There was a time when SMS was only 25 paise and outgoing calls were 50 paise (though we had heavy monthly fees). Also, data plans tended to be Rs. 500/- per month for unlimited usage. Now data plans are a ridiculous Rs. 20/MB for bandwidth based plans or Rs. 10/hour for time based plans.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is forcing rate drops every year and pressuring the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) to accept it's recommendations. This is because Govt. of India sees mobile communications as the fasted method of data-enabling the remote corners of India where conventional telecom deployment hasn't happened in 60 years of independent India.
Does anyone remember when receiving texts were FREE? I remember 5 years ago, when I went to Vegas with my fam, I had an old Nokia candybar phone. You know, the kind that only has black text, a green background light, and basically just made calls and texted. Well it used to cost nothing to receive an unlimited number of texts, seeing that you don't have an option if a friend texts you. But AT&T would charge you for sending one out, and it was about 10 or 12 cents. Now it's like a quarter if you don't have a plan, and it costs the same either way (I think, but definitely costs more now than it used to).
About time someone inquired about this. I wonder if Senator Kohl has any kids or grandchildren that recently racked up a huge texting bill and thought to himself "these prices ARE crazy."
I have an unlimited texting plan on a BlackBerry, and I agree, the messenger is nice. Unlimited texting should really only cost about half as much as it does! It DOES use less bandwidth, help the flow of traffic since there are fewer calls... but who knows, maybe someone who sends a million texts a month is straining AT&T's resources more than those who call... hmmm
THATS MY SENATOR!!!!! Wait, I thought he died,.... oh well, GO HERB!!1
Herb is a pretty great guy. Wisconsin has two pretty good rich Jewish senators. Good times.
And to the guy who said he owns a NBA team - he owns the Bucks, which BARELY qualifies as a NBA team.
Sorry if this has been posted already but I thought people here would get a kick out of this.
"Would you pay $66 for 1 megabyte of data? You already are." (http://justinflood.com/?p=300)
I haven't checked his math but if regular text message rates were applied to data a typical 4+mb mp3 would cost over $260 to download...
I wonder how long before competitive carriers offer data rates for text messages... (or text rates for data LOL)
What a waste of time and money that could be put to far better use.