
The True Price of SMS Messages - chaostheory
http://gthing.net/the-true-price-of-sms-messages/
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ebukys
"SMS messages are transfered over air made of solid gold."

Hahaa, brilliant!

So that's why I've been paying insane amounts for texting...

@ breck: I have semi-unlimited texting with Verizon, it's free to send or
receive from Verizon customers (which is why I got it, I was tired of yelling
at my friends for sending me texts like, "im bored. whatre you doing later"
and "idk my bff jill?"--almost all of them have Verizon). It is exactly ten
dollars a month right now, and I only get a hundred or so texts to and from
other companies. A truly unlimited texting plan is somewhere in the area of
$50.00 a month, I believe. Don't quote that, my internet is being ridiculously
slow and I'm not about to wait for it to load the Verizon Wireless page to
check.

@ tptacek: I may complain about Verizon, but it's only because I love them.
Why, you ask? Two reasons. One, my close friends all use Verizon, so texting
them costs me nothing, and costs THEM nothing as well. Two, I have brand name
loyalty and know it. It is MY network and so, logically, it is better than
everyone else's.

Haha.

Seriously though, if there WAS a better network I could switch to, as well as
have all my friends and family switch to, I would do it in an instant. The
problem that I have right now, is that even if I were to pay less money,
switching over to something like Cricket, my friends would all end up paying
MORE money because I'm no longer on their network. Which probably means that
while I have unlimited texting to whoever I want, no one will want me to send
them messages, because it's costing them money. And if no one is sending me
messages, and I am not sending anyone else messages, what is the point of
having unlimited texting?

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dcurtis
I just dropped Verizon, and they have a plan for 10 dollars a month, unlimited
texting to and from any network. Where'd you get the $50 number?

(Aside: It's probably better to just do multiple replies to the people you're
responding to directly than to create a new comment with @ replies.)

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tptacek
Once again, with feeling: goods and services aren't priced based on their cost
to the provider. They are priced based on what the market values them at.

Analyses like this are silly. The marginal cost of a single SMS message is
effectively zero. Why compare them to ISP rates? Those are arbitrary too. Take
the argument to its logical conclusion and SMS should be free. I agree!

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pierrefar
The fact is, this kind of calculation shows how absurd the mobile market is in
the USA. So much for claiming that it's a "free market" and it is
"competitive".

~~~
ardit33
they need something like EU, which puts good regulations on hold. Carriers
used to charge lots of fees for calls made out of your country, and I think EU
is putting an end to that extortion.

Sure, you have the "free markets" types that say eventuall something will rise
and sidestep SMS, but that's now going to happen. In this case free markets,
with no proper regulation, just create an enviroment where the carriers can
collude, and milk every cent from you.

~~~
pierrefar
I'm not sure more regulation is the way forward though. Maybe in the short
term, but certainly not long term...

~~~
mixmax
Ideologically I agree with you, but regulation seems to have worked well in
the EU.

~~~
pchristensen
Ditto. A perfect market wouldn't need regulation, but we're far from a perfect
market. The barriers to entry (both financial and regulatory) means that there
isn't much competition, so regulation can help. Regulation isn't perfect, but
neither is our implementation of the market.

~~~
anamax
The solution to the barriers imposed by regulation is regulations?

I'm reminded of the "danger, low sign" sign.

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axod
Simply can't understand how you could be charged for _incoming_ SMS. That is
just perverse. Who would get a phone like that??

~~~
maximilian
What choice do you have? All the carriers charge like that so I don't really
have an option.

I wish one of those companies would just stand up above the rest and not suck.
They are all so shitty. All the new phones in america suck. I'm still using a
super old nokia and I was going to upgrade it, but all the phones at the store
were all pathetic. At least congress made it easy to switch to a new carrier
because of the number-portability bill.

I'm with verizon right now, who generally have a great network, but I would
drop them in a heartbeat if something better came around. However i hear
nothing but bad things about AT&T (nee Cingular) and sprint usually doesn't
have the best coverage, although I have thought of switching to them because
they have some great plans. T-Mobile isn't any better either.

~~~
mixmax
"What choice do you have?"

Move to Europe.

On a more serious note - I think this is probably one of the main reasons that
the Scandinavian countries are ahead in the mobile game. You can get cheap
plans that include an unlimited amount of text messaging, most people don't
have landlines anymore, and quite a few use their phone as their only means of
hooking up to the Internet - you can get 7 mbit and free traffic pretty
cheaply with your 3G phone.

I noticed a few of the startups mentioned here that did wireless stuff that
we've seen years ago over here - there has even been a story of a startup that
did a wireless location service, and was touted as super-smart and innovative.
A friend of mine did the exact same thing over here back in 2003.

Unfortunately we have a small home market, a broken investment system for
startups, and are terrible at selling ourselves. So we don't do well on the
international scene.

~~~
gustaf
"I think this is probably one of the main reasons that the Scandinavian
countries are ahead in the mobile game. You can get cheap plans that include
an unlimited amount of text messaging"

I'm from Scandinavia and this isn't really the case. Data is more expensive in
Sweden than in US. The US market has done a lot to make it easy for people to
use data on their mobile phones. Sure, we have advanced phones in Sweden but
that's about it.

Some countries with cheap data-plans for mobile:
<http://gammalife.blogspot.com/2008/02/pricing.html>

~~~
mixmax
Interesting - there might be differences across the waters. I'm from Denmark.

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aschobel
I'm a bit disappointed that he didn't include IPoAC (IP over Avian Carriers)
in his comparisons.

Sure it is high latency, but the bandwidth is killer.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers>

~~~
Tichy
Hm, that inspires me to another idea: maybe smoke signals could be revived, if
they could be automatically picked up by weather satellites?

I wonder at what resolution and frequency the world is being scanned by
satellites these days? I often wonder how to help people in war countries. For
example Tibet at the moment: communication channels are being shut down, how
could one provide people with simple means to get a message out to the world?
Could smoke signals be a solution?

One problem is that I would not like the sender of the message to be
detectable by the enemy. Not sure if that is solvable at all (certainly not
with smoke signals).

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ALee
I've come to the conclusion that the carriers are our generation's Big Blue.

You need to work with them (like Microsoft did), but really, they're stifling
creativity and I don't think anyone would be sorry to see them lose some of
their power.

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tlrobinson
I find it ridiculous that they charge for incoming text messages, especially
as SMS spam is beginning to be more prevalent. As if spam wasn't annoying
enough already I now get _charged_ for it? I predict lots of class action
lawsuits if this continues.

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simanyay
For comparison: in Uzbekistan, outgoing SMS message costs 2c and all incoming
messages are free.

~~~
michaelneale
I guess 2c is really a lot more money to the local economy though?

I also enjoyed a reference to Uzbekistan that wasn't the end of a joke ;)

~~~
simanyay
It depends. Unfortunately, we have a huge gap between poor people and those of
us who can afford a little bit more.

So 2c per message is cheap and SMS is quite popular here. However, it is still
cheaper to call than to have an SMS chat because, for example, I pay 2c per
minute for both outgoing and incoming calls.

If you are interested, here is an information page from our biggest operator:
<http://www.mts.uz/eng/abonents/tarifs/>

(I use another company but its website has no english version)

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breck
Unlimited text messaging plans are a couple bucks a month.

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danw
Yes the mark up is huge, but it is used to offset costs elsewhere in the
network. The money is used to build and maintain all those tower sites, pay
for the expensive 3G licenses and subsidise handsets.

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dhimes
We need a hack that sends text messages over the voice connection.

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ctingom
Insane!

