The obvious truth about text messaging: you're getting ripped off
By Darren Murph 
posted December 28th 2008 9:58PM
posted December 28th 2008 9:58PM
C'mon folks, does it really take an in-depth research study to figure this one out? On the whole, per-use SMS rates have doubled from $0.10 to $0.20 in the span of three years, and carriers have shown no shame in pushing messaging packs (the "unlimited" one in particular) in an effort to snag more revenue per user. We already knew that Senator Herb Kohl was looking into the matter, and a new piece in The New York Times clearly explains just how lucrative these bite-sized messages are for carriers. We're told that most consumers simply assume that it's costing operators more each year as the volume of texts sent increases; according to University of Waterloo professor Srinivasan Keshav, "it doesn't cost the carrier much more to transmit a hundred million messages than a million." You see, SMS messages are elusively hidden within the so-called "control channel," which is space already reserved for the operation of the wireless network. So long as messages are kept concise (say, 160 characters or less), they can be sent without any real implication on the channel. Will this epiphany somehow change the way we're being gouged? Tough to say, but don't think for a second that carriers won't figure out another way to nickle-and-dime you if the hand is forced.[Thanks, Jeevan]
So how is that land-line rip-off working out for you, then? Or do you have VOIP, and getting ripped off for that, too?
I think it is just something people have come to accept.
I made no hesitation to bump myself up to unlimited messaging, just so I didnt have to worry about it. I mean, I only use maybe 2,000 on a month I use alot, but its easier to pay the extra $8 and not worry about it (VZW unlimited is $15, but the smaller packs are $5-$10 as it is).
Same thing with data. Of course that actually costs them something, especially since most users that have data packages actually use them quite a bit.
I'm sure it's been said...
It's Supply and Demand.
If people stopped paying, they may not gouge us so bad for texts. It's mostly about convenience. I love being able to send someone a text message vs. leaving a voice mail. If somebody leaves me a voice mail I have to wait for the voice mail to connect, enter my password, navigate to the message, listen to the message, and all the formalities that apply, then reply somehow. Text messages are faster to send, easier, and more discrete to read, and faster to reply to. I haven't tested this, but I could probably receive a a text, read, and respond in the time it takes to connect to the voice mail system, especially if it's a "Yes or No" response. If anything you would think carriers would encourage the use of texts instead of tying up the bandwidth of the network.
Possibly when Visual Voice Mail becomes main stream, text messaging will decrease.
i have 1000 free sms from sprint, thats a LOT unless you really need unlimited texting.
The US government will never regulate the crimes of the American wireless industry. Look at any other nation in comparison; we get raped for our phone service. But nothing will change, if they've been allowed to do as they like so far, why would they be stopped now?
wow.. there's a lot of angry people writing comments here.. =( cheer up, y'all.. it's not so bad.
am just waiting for my contract to be up with att they show show no love for existing customers. if you want to upgrade to the newest phone they wont let you have to wait until contract is up to get the special pricing. aswell, when i was with t-mobile they would always let me upgrade. and one thing i learned Sprint has an awesome TEXT bundle. and tmobile as well.
for my att line i only have voice and unlimited nw @ 7
i have my prepaid by Boost for Text Messaging 1 for unlimited chat plan. its works out great.
DO THE MATH
If you apply the cost the average carrier charges a customer to send a single text message (call it $0.10) and apply that to the bit rate of downloading an MP3 . . . you would be charged roughly $27,000 for downloading a single song.
What can we do about this??? Do we as the consumer have any power to change this???
Actually, for copyright infringement, the RIAA would like to charge $750,000. They would say that SMS rates are a bargain!
they can keep raising them!!! I am granfathered into a tmobile promo plan $10 unlimited text, video. IM's and picture messaging for all 5 of my lines, $2 per line, per month!!!!!!!!!!
I always wonder why someone says they are getting ripped off but chooses to engage in a voluntary transaction anyway.
Could it be that Verizon/Sprint/AT&T figured out how much SMS is worth to the general public and are charging accordingly?
(Surely, if you thought it was a ridiculous price, you'd stop paying for it.)
I just don't get why my text messages aren't included in my UNLIMITED data plan with my iPhone. Those little text messages require less bandwidth than me downloading applications, music or even browsing the internet. Thanks AT&T.
Just use your email to text. Problem solved.
@Cassini
$125 for that?! Boy you guys across the pond are really being taken for a ride!
I pay £35 ($51.45 US) a month and get; 700 any time any network minutes, unlimited texts, and unlimited data. Oh, and that £35/$51 includes VAT/tax.
@GenoMalice
6.95 - System access fee ? That the hell is that all about?!
Be happy you arent in Canada.
Bell and Telus charge 0.15 for each out going message, and 0.15 for an incoming message if you dont have a Text Message plan.
it's a scam :(
Progress/technology held back by human greed.. if something can be milked it will be milked to the very last drop. yada yada.. there's no end in sight to this cash cow.
Hrm, odd...
My Sprint everything plan includes unlimited data, texts, picture mail, 450 minutes a month, nights starting at 7pm and America roaming; all that for 69.99 a month (plus taxes, of course). I can further discount by 25% that if I was to talk to my friend who works at Boeing, but I'm sort of lazy about that ATM.
Still, it's not a bad deal. I know it's not SERO (RIP, SERO...), but It's still a reasonable price for my usage habits.
Besides, at least with Sprint, they allow downloading of large files, unlike with AT&T, where you can't download huge files off the App store on the iPhone. Best 3G network in America my ass...
Sprint's call network might be spotty, but at least their pricing is decent. Then again, that's probably the only thing saving them from losing all their customers forever.
Here is Australia with Virgin Mobile we pay 10c per SMS still, which is less than 8 US cents per message up to 160 characters, on their 'Bean Counter' plan, which also offers low costs calls.
http://www.virginmobile.com.au/rates/prepaid_compare.html
The bizarre thing is that the last 2 times I was in the US on roaming, all my SMS's had 0.00 as the cost next to each one.
I guess I got lucky with my $10 for unlimited txts on my prepaid plan. I have to put $25 on the phone ever month, but that works for me. Never have to put more, and I probably use 10,000 txtx per month. I bet they hate me. lol
You gotta ask around what's available. I don't think my option exists anymore but because I got in before it was removed, I still have it.
It really baffles me why in the US using a mobile phone costs so much more... here in the UK I pay £10 a month and get unlimited texts, 200 minutes and 10MB of data... if I really wanted I could get unlimited everything for £22.50, so that's what, less than $35?
Also, I never understood how anyone accepts the paying to receive calls and messages...
The thing that the USA and Australia both have in common is that there is a vast area of land to cover, most of which has low population density. The cost of servicing all that area gets passed on to the city dwellers. The cost of SMS is high, but so is the cost of providing the networks. In much or Europe and the UK, the land coverage is much smaller and the population density per square mile is much higher, and hence cost of service is lower.
All that being said, I still hate pretty much every Telco company.
Im with AT&T i used to pay that ridiculous 20 a month on top of my iphone data plan along with my voice plan.. i figured enough was enough. i canceled my unlimited text down to 200 which ill get rid of eventually as i make this transistion.. i decided to make full use of my unlimited email and with aim program thats what i use for free sms.. i know its a pain with the lack of push but that 20 bucks is useful in these hard times. so what if i miss a text if its really important call me.. i think for one month everyone should just cancel their text plans and see if we can make some type of an impact because i really they are charging just to much money for sms messaging.
I wanted to write a follow-up post expanding the discussion into ways to cut down on these sorts of wireless fees. I work for a company called Validas that reduces the average person's cell bill by 22 percent through their website, http://www.fixmycellbill.com. You upload your bill and find out for free if you're one of the eight in ten wireless customers being overcharged, and if so, by how much. If you choose, Validas provides an additional highly detailed and personalized adjustment report that, for five bucks, is emailed to your wireless provider in industry specific format in order to implement Validas's cash saving changes to your plan. If Validas can save you more than $5 on your bill (the average customer currently saves $480 annually through Validas), then this obviously provides a cost effective remedy for reducing cellular expenses.
Validas is becoming known as the preeminent advocate for the wireless consumer. Check out Validas in the media:
on CNBC at: http://www.cnbc.com/id/22782456/
and in the New York Times at: http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/validas/
Happy holidays, and good luck to everyone reading on trimming down wireless expenses in this tough economy.
Dylan
If you feel you are getting ripped off by your carrier, then maybe quit buying the newest gadget-phone with constant (incessant) internet connectivity. Maybe, try a carrier like MetroPcs (if you live in their area). www.metropcs.com I have used t-Mobile for years, and I am not getting that G-1 or the Blackberry, because with internet, it would cost me as much as the internet service I have at home. I have no need to have constant email service, or to be able to look up people on YouTube while I am driving or walking around. I am a gadget addict like the rest of you, but, do you really need the newest and latest (yeah, yeah, I can hear the boos) but if more people chose services like MetroPCS then the other companies would be forced to reduce their rates.
Ha! Finally a subject I have inside information of! The article (and most of the commenters) is missing one key fact - backhaul. Once those millions of text messages leave the air waves and start moving through ground-based networks on their way to their intended recipient, you gotta pay for links and systems to carry and route them.
The carrier I work for often carries several hundred million messages in a single day to/from our subscribers. I know for a fact that we're installing/upgrading links and gear pretty much every night across the network just to try to keep up with the increasing load.
Of course that means you have to pay all the people who track utilization, do product research, network design, project planning, ordering, accounting, scheduling, installation, configuration, operation, monitoring, troubleshooting, repair, negotiate contracts and relationships with other carriers so we can hand them traffic for their customers and they'll send us traffic for our customers (do you have *any* idea how many carriers there are around the globe?), and then someone to answer the phones when something breaks and give you the free minutes which are pretty much the only currency we can offer to soothe your outrage.
Of course that's completely ignoring the separate systems and resources required by law to support 911 (which I don't begrudge one bit, I'm just saying), and the fact that when you roll out the "next big thing" like 3G or visual voice mail it doesn't begin pay for itself for a looong time since no one is using it yet, but you get verbal beat-downs from ...errr... "journalists" because you don't have it rolled out to East Armpit, Arkansas yet.
But hey, that little bit of bandwidth from the cell tower to the handset is sort-of free, right?, and you should be *outraged* that you get charged for it.
Man I love this business. Seriously, I do. The work is interesting, and enough of those phone calls and text messages are seriously important that I feel like I make a difference in people's lives even though they have no idea I'm here.
How is that different than other data (e.g. voice, internet. etc...)? Why is texting, which is clearly the lowest bandwidth, often an additional fee on top of voice and data plans? Also, why do people get charged to receive a text message? It's absurd that people get charged to both send and receive texts.
"We're told that most consumers simply assume that it's costing operators more each year as the volume of texts sent increases"
That's because the average consumer is a clueless idiot cow. The same cows who value a pretty device over a functional device. The same cows who will fall for a slogan over doing research on something before a purchase. Well they said it tastes great with less filling and there are nekid chicks dancing around. So it MUST be good!
In all seriousness the average consumer is an idiot. What do you think keeps marketing departments in business? It sure as heck isn't their ability to tell the truth to consumers.
Come to live in Cyprus!! The mobile networks here are so heavily subsidised!!
I pay €14 a month and get
300 minutes, any time, any network and 120 texts.
After that texts are 1cent each and calls about 4cent a minute any time, any network...
Maximum my bill is a month, about €40 :-) :-) :-)
Im actually alittle pissed to see how little it affects the network of my carrier...... I pretty much guilted sprint into giving me a sweet contract years ago and get a ton of free stuff with two phones..... I think its time to pay my bill..... Sad panda am I.....
Everyone I know (who could understand how to send a text message) owns a smart phone with push e-mail. We communicate the old fashioned way, e-mail. I'm no telecommunications expert, but it seems to me that e-mails should tax the network more than text messages.
$0.20 per message, assuming a message has the maximum 160 characters, means 8bytes/cent.
If your broadband cost that, you would be paying 1.25 MILLION DOLLARS per GB! Are their overheads 100,000 times more than data? Is each letter embroidered in gold onto the wing of a live swan before sending?
In Romania a SMS is 0.05 euro for any message inside the country and the receiver pays nothing. International SMS are obviously more expensive, about 0.20 euro. Un unlimited 3G/HSDPA data plan is 10 euro or 20 euro for really heavy traffic at full speed. Most of the voice plans are under 10 euro and include hundreds of minutes inside the network or with favorite numbers plus minutes in other networks. I use two phones, one with a 10.5 euro monthly plan, which includes 260 minutes inside the network with favorites and outside business hours plus 3 days max 8 GB trafic internet. Another plan I have is 3 euro and includes 30 national minutes. Compared to the prices some specified seems pretty cheap.
I just hate how it is the only form of "mail" that you have to PAY to RECEIVE it even if you don't want it.When I had the ATT prepaid plan, would get charged 15 cents for receiving a message, even if I didn't open it. Imagine your mailman walking around with a pouch full of change, and you would have to give him 15 cents to receive your bills. Robbery at its finest.
This consideration is indeed partially right, as it takes only the network ‘plumbing’ infrastructure into consideration, i.e. if you forget that an SMS needs more than just the SS7 signaling channel in order to be handled (routed & retried), but needs application ‘machinery’ like the SMSC or SMS router and SMS gateway, storage, billing, etc as well.
SMS indeed very smartly makes use of the ‘open spaces’ that voice signaling traffic leaves in the dedicated SS7 network for signaling, so could be regarded as already paid for, used or not. But there’s more than meets the eye. You can and should attribute a part of the cost of the (signaling) infrastructure to SMS as it represents a serious chunk of traffic. Moreover, the SS7 control channel has been never designed to carry billions of text messages, so at one point it will get so clogged that these messages will be seriously delayed, compromising the quality and speediness of the text messaging service and compromising the principles of its own success. And in its process it will also clog the voice control channel and compromise the 911 service, for example. So, in order to cater for SMS in a scalable and qualitative way, the SS7 network needs upgrades too.
But in order to route and retry and store and manage and charge and bill and report these billions of messages, you will need a SMS application infrastructure on top of that SS7 transport infrastructure as well, consisting of an SMSC (old style) or better, a tiered architecture of router/storage/gateway/application (new style) if you want to scale cost-effectively from that mentioned million to a hundred million to several billions and if you want to be able to introduce new services quickly and without risk.
Chris Lennartz, VP Product Marketing, Airwide Solutions
Actually, it does cost more, most SMSC vendors charge based on the volume of messages crossing their system.
Sweet Jesus in Heaven .. I actually wrote the Times writer (and got a personal reply) and suggested he visit a Wal-Mart and look at the wireless data prices for Virgin Mobile USA, Boost, et. al.
He replied he had no *concrete* proof of price-fixing, but an investigation was needed (right .. let's investigate everything .. the banking system's nearly collapsed, and we're fighting over friggin' dimes ..).
I reiterated my advice: go to Wal-Mart and see the prices there. I also pointed how to get Congressional correspondence. No reply.
What a nickle-and-DIME story.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "UNLIMITED" TEXT MESSAGING!!!
I have the "unlimited" messaging package from Verizon, and there are still some text messages THEY charge me for. This is any shit from Glomobi or anything, it's a standard text message to say the WGN news, which clearly states that "standard fee apply." I'm certain the standard fee is the $30/month that's paid for the "unlimited" family messaging plan. But Verizon somehow is construing this into "We're going to charge you extra for no God damn reason." That's what you call a hidden fee, because you don't find out until you see your statement.
I pay $175/month (total after taxes - ofcourse I'm rounding but that's my average total per month) and this is what I get:
Family Talk with 550 shared minutes across 3 phones
Unlimited data on my iphone
Two - 200 txt messages plans (on my wife's and my phone)
unlimited nights / weekends
Unlimited calling to anyone that has ATT
No roaming anywhere in the US
A 6 Mbps down / 512 Kbps up dsl connection
Unlimited local calling on a phone line (with long distance - pay per use)
Full access to every ATT Wifi hotspot with no charge
I also was given $250 in cash back whenever I created this deal
Am I getting ripped off?
I don't mean ethically ripped off (sms should be included in data). I just mean, in general, compared to what other companies offer am I getting ripped off?
From what I could tell, for all I'm getting, I worked out a good deal for myself
If you have a data plan already there is a chance to get out of this, I have an iPhone and I started using btexty (www.btexty.com) to send messages to all my friends. It works great for me and it's very cheap (actually free to try).
GL
Indeed its a ripp-off, i allways wished some provider would be smart enough to make messages below 80 characters free. And maybe rise the cap if things go well.
You'd wipe out other providers in just mere months.
Well, i hope higher prices keep you from sending too much. As been proven excessive use can cause cancer, or at least increases your chances. I used to have my phone in my pocket but since i dont really fancy a third ball, i switch it off when not needed.
Here in Ireland I'm on Meteor on pre-pay. I top up by €20 - that gives me unlimited sms and calls to other Meteor numbers (or free sms to any network), and then I still have that €20 to spend on data at the not so great price of €0.99 a day for a mere 50MB, or calls and texts outside of my offer. But basically I send thousands of messages a month (yes, I do believe that'd probably qualify as an addiction), get all the data and calls I need for a month for €20
This is totally true. The U.S. gov. should look into regulating some of these prices. BUT for now, the best thing to do is get unlimited texting. I have T-mobile (which I love) and unlimited texting for a family plan (2-5 lines) is only $20 a month! It's a great deal compared to the other guys who charge $25-35 for the same thing.
BTW poor Canada. I have a friend there who's with rogers and his bill is $130 for his blackberry per month (not even unlimited!) and on top of that, he signed up for a 3 year contract! I've never even heard of that here in the U.S.
yup the truth is that it costs less per meg to transmit data to the hubble than it is to text.
that is seriously warped. the amount of data in a voice call simply makes a text insignificant. if voice were billed at text rates there would be no cell phone industry, it simply would be unaffordable. something has to be done about this rip off. and no, carriers aren't really a full free market, they operate in a government protected/licensed monopoly really.