
Using SMS is like paying for email, email that isn't very good... - chrisparcel
http://blog.mycannonball.com/using-sms-is-like-paying-for-email
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mtogo
I like SMS. It's completely universal, anyone who owns a phone made in the
last 10 years can use it. It's great to build applications on top of (Twilio,
Voxeo), and it's very efficient-- a little slower than XMPP, but it has the
advantage that you can use it anywhere, even if there's no wifi.

Paying to send 160 chars of text is a little annoying, but at $0.01/text it's
hard to complain too much about.

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AgentConundrum
> _$0.01/text it's hard to complain too much about._

That depends entirely on where you are and whether or not you have a texting
plan.

For example, I have very little use for texting, and simply cannot justify the
cost of a monthly texting plan for my (non-smart) phone. Since I'm in Canada,
and our telecom companies are all complete bastards up here, I pay $0.15 to
send a text. I also pay $0.15 to _receive_ a text. It's ridiculous.

~~~
jpulgarin
Unlimited texting plans are about $10 iirc. If you can't justify the cost of a
monthly texting plan then you're paying < $10, which is hardly ridiculous.

~~~
pyre
It's ridiculous because if the cell companies can afford to allow you to send
1000s of texts for $10/month, then:

* Why does it cost $0.15/text to send/receive? 1000 texts at that rate is $150.00.

* Why do they charge for incoming text and then make it so hard to block incoming texts?

* There are perverse incentives. The cell carriers have no incentive to block/deter SMS spam on their network. Actually, they are incentivized to _allow_ it.

* In the US, on some carriers, it's ~ $0.25 - $0.35 to send/receive texts without a plan, whereas unlimited is usually ~$10/month.

* The cell carriers want people to pay a standard rate because it makes their accounting calculations/projections easier.

* The cell carriers want people to pay a standard rate because they probably would pay less on a pay-as-you-go plan. (Though if people started taxing the SMS system, they would quickly reverse course and start talking about people being 'SMS hogs.')

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sukuriant
"* Why does it cost $0.15/text to send/receive? 1000 texts at that rate is
$150.00."

Capitalism, dear pyre. Enough people are willing to pay it, so they do.

~~~
pyre
Right, because cell carriers are a completely free market. It's a good thing
that we kept the government out of the cell carrier market... oh wait...

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wccrawford
Everyone I know can get an SMS on their phone. Only a couple of those people
can get email on their phone. That means that if I want to contact most of
them quickly, but quietly, I have only 1 choice: SMS.

SMS would die quickly if something else came along that became ubiquitous
overnight. Since we know that isn't going to happen, there's no point
complaining about it.

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cdcarter
Unfortunately right now the choice is SMS (one app, in my dock standard), or
GroupMe for some friends, Kik for some others, a few on Facebook Messenger,
four or five who've figured out Huddle, and some other small fragment once
iMessage shows up.

Sometimes, I don't mind paying for convenience.

~~~
aphexairlines
What do any of those offer that email doesn't? If you send me an email, it
gets pushed to my phone apparently instantly.

~~~
cdcarter
I don't work in IT/a computer related field. Many people I know do not have
smart phones.

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redguava
I would love to see SMS disappear. The two things I think are holding it back:

\- Phone's default ringtones for SMS are much more notable than the email
alert. Change the defaults on phones so that it's more obvious when an email
arrives and people will be more likely to use it.

\- Less spam. People are generally confident that SMS messages are sent from
someone they know, so they check them immediately. If email had less spam,
people would be more interested when email arrives.

Fix these two things and I think there will be broader appeal to email as a
replacement to SMS.

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meric
$0.01 per 160 characters for reduced number of spam messages. Good deal.
Especially since I am still using an old-world phone which can't run SMS.app
(i.e no spam catcher).

If I had to delete 50 spam sms a day using my tiny mobile phone buttons....

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biafra
One more thing about SMS. It's less power consuming and works without GPRS and
UMTS.

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twodayslate
I use SMS because it has the best integration with my phone. I can set up
quick reply so I don't even have to leave the app I am in to reply to someone.

I only use the google voice app when I have little service but still on wifi.

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eurleif
Unfortunately, SMS has a much stronger network effect than AOL did.

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Derbasti
Sending data by SMS is several times more expensive than receiving data from
the Hubble space telescope (~$10/Mb). 'Nuff said.

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tspiteri
SMS is more secure than email. I would not send my credit card details over
email. Would it be so bad to send credit card details using SMS?

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ansy
SMS is arguably less secure than email over an SSL connection. Why would you
even consider sending credit card details over SMS? Not only can SMS messages
be sniffed and you have no idea if carriers are encrypting it or unencrypting
it, but your SMS messages are stored unprotected on both the sending and
receiving phones. These could get lost, stolen, or hacked. News Corp cell
phone hacking scandal? Celebrity cell phone hackig scandals? If you have an
smart phone and sync back up to a computer it copies over your SMS history in
plain text. If a police officer pulls you over he has a device that can copy
over the entire contents of your cell phone. Common criminals or anyone else
aren't far behind.

The best way to exchange credit card information safely is when every step is
certified to be PCI compliant which has very strict rules for how credit card
information is transmitted, handled, and stored and who can handle them.

I would sooner speak my credit card number to a trusted vendor's call center
employee than SMS it anywhere. I have yet to give out my credit card over the
phone and I'd never email it.

