http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/ Engadget Comments for Senator opens inquiry into rising text messaging rates http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 12:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 12:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
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.]]>Sep 10th 2008 12:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
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...]]>Sep 10th 2008 12:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 1:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
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 . . . .

]]>Sep 10th 2008 1:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
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.]]>Sep 10th 2008 1:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
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.]]>Sep 10th 2008 1:59PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
That makes sense not.

The new opacity-proportional vote system is annoying too. Now I'm squinting to read everything. Great.]]>Sep 10th 2008 2:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 2:21PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
Blind much?]]>Sep 10th 2008 2:54PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 3:34PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
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. ]]>Sep 10th 2008 4:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
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.]]>Sep 10th 2008 4:48PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 4:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
"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.


]]>Sep 10th 2008 5:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 11th 2008 4:52AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 11th 2008 3:15PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
"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.]]>Sep 12th 2008 2:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 12:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
*$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.]]>Sep 10th 2008 12:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 1:27PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
If ISPs want to restrict that stuff, fine, but they need to make more options with higher limits available, for a (reasonably) higher price.]]>Sep 10th 2008 2:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 2:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
Text a lot.
]]>Sep 10th 2008 12:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 12:39PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
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.]]>Sep 10th 2008 1:21PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 3:17PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
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 (]]>Sep 10th 2008 7:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
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. ]]>Sep 10th 2008 12:40PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Then suddenly changes his position to tell Canadians to switch Carriers...
]]>Sep 10th 2008 12:43PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 3:21PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 12:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 12:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 3:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
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.]]>Sep 10th 2008 12:46PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 12:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 2:48PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 12th 2008 4:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 12:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 12:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/
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!]]>Sep 10th 2008 12:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/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.
]]>Sep 10th 2008 12:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 5:26PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 12:53PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 12:59PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 12:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/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.]]>Sep 11th 2008 3:16AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 12:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/senator-opens-inquiry-into-rising-text-messaging-rates/Sep 10th 2008 1:29PM