Senator opens inquiry into rising text messaging rates
By Donald Melanson 
posted September 10th 2008 12:31PM
posted September 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.
Texting? I agree.
Ok, so you pay for data plan and pay text messaging extra. Can someone explain why this is not combined to single data plan? I can see the text messaging without data plan.
How about VoIP from mobile phone to mobile phone? SIP? Why do we still pay for calls?
Herb Kohl is a putz, I'm from Wisconsin and would prefer he stop warrantless wire-tapping rather then spending time and my tax dollars on the cost of text messages. PUTZ!
.20 a text? What? That's 150 texts for every $30. I'm getting unlimited text on all 3 phones on my account for $30. Am I missing something?
Dear Government,
Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, Gimme. I wasn't cheep stuff, cheep stuff, cheep stuff, cheep stuff, cheep stuff.
If it's not cheep, pass a law. Screw contracts, and voluntary exchange. Everything is a monopoly. I know it is because I'm a freaking genius. I can pull market concentration ratios out of my ass, look weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
-Engadget
Wow.... I guess the issue totally went over your head.
Text messaging is the greatest example of wallet rape from a monopolistic industry with participants all colluding together to keep prices artificially high.
How can these companies charge $30 for unlimited 3G data and then charge $1,300 for 1MB of text message data!?!
2 simple words explain this.
price fixing
Plain and simple, after the last carrier consolidation the 4 remaining suddenly adopted identical (and higher) price plans than they had previously had for all new sigh ups. They also retroactively raised prices for existing customers on any services that were not contractually bound within the customers current plan. The government, in it's infinite wisdom, after allowing them to reunify (we're practically back to the big bell woes) has hence forth decided to ignore any oligopolist behavior that has been displayed. I think that part is called "kick back".
What I want to know is why its cheaper to transfer a megabyte of websites than it is a megabyte of text.
This whole opacity thing with the comments sucks big time. The only posts I can read easily are the ones that are high ranked. You should at least start off easy to read and then just get opaque as you get lower ranked, not start off as unreadable.
Has anyone ever asked their CSP why there is additional costs in text messaging? Aren't "texters" doing them a favor in reducing the stress on their network bandwidth?
You guys are sooooooo funny.... :-D
Holy crap, you people are a bunch of whiners. We're not talking about food or medicine. It's not a requirement for human existence. No one has a gun to your head forcing you to buy a text plan. If if was too expensive, people would stop doing it. It's called the free market, you fools. Supply and demand. Demand goes up, so does price until the market can't bear it. Then prices will drop. If Kohl and his Democrap cronies want to put more money in my pocket, LOWER MY TAXES!! Y'all make me sick.
It's high time for SMS and MMS charges to just plain go away for anyone that has a data plan.
Wasn't gas about $2 a gallon in 2005? The Honorable Gentleman from Wisconsin prolly has to pay his own phone bill but not fill his own tank. Way to go Senator!
Um why the hell is a senator wasting his time and our money looking into this stupid crap? This is a free market. If a company wants to charge 15$ per text they can. You, the idiot consumer, dont have to sign up for that. But you probably will because most americans are freakin morons that just sign on any dotted line placed in front of them. Of course cell phone companies will try to raise rates if they think they can get away with it. I HAVE AN IDEA SENATOR: TELL STUPID JACKASS AMERICANS TO WAKE THE FUCK UP AND PAY ATTENTION TO HOW THEY ARE SPENDING THEIR MONEY. THEY SCREW THEMSELVES OVER ON A DAILY BASIS, AND THEN THEY WANT TO CRY ABOUT IT? LIKE ITS SOMEONE ELSES FAULT?
And what about people that have to pay for text messages they recieve that they didn't want in the first place?
Come on dude.... You know you can deactivate text messages all together right? And you also know that you can respond to spam text messages and they will stop too right? And moreover, YOU signed on the dotted line. Thats what it ultimately boils down too. No one put a gun to your head and required you to sign. So, basically, YOU didnt read the fine print. Sounds like YOUR fault to me. Maybe you will get 2 magnifying glasses and a team of lawyers next time to help you interpret the 18 pages of microscopic text before you sign on the dotted line.
Separate issue Vid...
Phone CEOs respond, "Have you seen the price of gas lately?"
Inflation?
by my math *each* text actually costs $0.40 since the carrier (in this case, AT&T) charges .20 to send it and .20 to receive it.
This may be the only thing that's cheaper in Canada. At least Rogers still does free to receive.
This guy should be a national hero, seriously. How often is it that someone steps up and notices a trend between industry consolidation and price hikes AND ACTUALLY DOES SOMETHING ABOUT IT?
...for now at least .... Rogers still has a corporate memory of the cable-tv reverse onus billing fiasco. Remember that one? That was when they gave everyone free preview of ALL channels when the digital cable services were first rolled out. And the customer was billed for channel they hadn't ordered after the initial "free" introductory period was up?
"Hey Martha, our cable bill is $250 bucks -- you've gotta cut back the porn..."
;)
Holy shit storm. For once, the public was quick to respond.... Rogers took a pasting that day.
Ted's now dead. The memory is fading quickly. I'd put money on a bet that their customers will be billed for received messages in the not to distant future.
j
I use a Vodafone plan that gives me 2000 sms free. The rental is Rs.50 and calls are like 50p and a rupee for long distance.
I love India :)
the increase to 20 cents is definitely shady. I have the SMS plan with t-mobile but I also send international text, and there is no plan I can sign up for that. SMS should actually be 5 cents with free incoming.
To get Bulk SMS and Short Code Services in over 182 countries worldwide visit http://sms.globalbulksms.com/ & http://globalwebsms.com/