3 ms·

Isn't it ridiculous how much can it cost to send an SMS over a cellular network? I would understand if they were sending a video message from Mars but it's a re

Isn't it ridiculous how much can it cost to send an SMS over a cellular network? I would understand if they were sending a video message from Mars but it's a really small ASCII text message sent to a neighbor country in the 21-st century. The whole global telephone system needs to be re-designed.

Stevvo 7y ago
It shouldn't cost anything at all. SMS piggybacks onto the signalling paths of GSM, which had 128 bytes unused, that can fit 160 characters. Your phone is sending & receiving those signals anyway, regardless of if you are sending an SMS message.
- hkai 7y ago
  So SMS should be free and mobile companies should just charge more for data, to earn the same profit?
cnst 7y ago
It's not just that — SMS actually get delivered as part of the unused signalling capacity as far as the airwaves are concerned, hence the 160 7bit limitation, to fit into the existing protocols. E.g., as far as the the costs go, I'd argue that airwaves would be most expensive in something like SMS, as it's a limited and finite resource that has to be shared by everyone within a given geographic area, yet they're basically used for free here due to the signalling already being mandatory even without SMS, so, any charge for SMS is basically pure profit by selling a resource that has to exists just for the signalling alone. If someone knows more about how is managed between ME and the tower, please correct me if I'm wrong. There's also the cost to run SMSC (Short Message service center), but that part would be done in the cloud, and cloud is a pretty commodity resource nowadays, where these sorts of costs per message can hardly be justified, so, basically, it'll probably be the billing itself that contributes most of the cost to the cost of SMS. P.S. Fun fact: I took a course at UWaterloo (in Canada) about the maths behind the computer networks, and during the time of the course, my professor has testified as a witness for US Government about the rising costs of SMS — https://www.c-span.org/person/?srinivasankeshav https://www.c-span.org/person/?srinivasankeshav.
- hkai 7y ago
  Why should the company sell SMS in relation to its cost? The seat selection on a plane costs literally zero for the company but people pay like 50 USD to seat at the front. A phone company just needs to find creative ways to earn profit. Why is it evil?
  - qwerty456127 7y ago
    It is evil when it's unreasonably expensive. The fact just a small number of people would use it in their sane mind even though there is capacity to serve much more people at no additional expense for the provider (nor for the environment) suggests there is no reason to keep prices this high.

Stevvo 7y ago

It shouldn't cost anything at all. SMS piggybacks onto the signalling paths of GSM, which had 128 bytes unused, that can fit 160 characters. Your phone is sending & receiving those signals anyway, regardless of if you are sending an SMS message.

hkai 7y ago
So SMS should be free and mobile companies should just charge more for data, to earn the same profit?

cnst 7y ago

It's not just that — SMS actually get delivered as part of the unused signalling capacity as far as the airwaves are concerned, hence the 160 7bit limitation, to fit into the existing protocols. E.g., as far as the the costs go, I'd argue that airwaves would be most expensive in something like SMS, as it's a limited and finite resource that has to be shared by everyone within a given geographic area, yet they're basically used for free here due to the signalling already being mandatory even without SMS, so, any charge for SMS is basically pure profit by selling a resource that has to exists just for the signalling alone. If someone knows more about how is managed between ME and the tower, please correct me if I'm wrong. There's also the cost to run SMSC (Short Message service center), but that part would be done in the cloud, and cloud is a pretty commodity resource nowadays, where these sorts of costs per message can hardly be justified, so, basically, it'll probably be the billing itself that contributes most of the cost to the cost of SMS. P.S. Fun fact: I took a course at UWaterloo (in Canada) about the maths behind the computer networks, and during the time of the course, my professor has testified as a witness for US Government about the rising costs of SMS — https://www.c-span.org/person/?srinivasankeshav https://www.c-span.org/person/?srinivasankeshav.

hkai 7y ago
Why should the company sell SMS in relation to its cost? The seat selection on a plane costs literally zero for the company but people pay like 50 USD to seat at the front. A phone company just needs to find creative ways to earn profit. Why is it evil?
- qwerty456127 7y ago
  It is evil when it's unreasonably expensive. The fact just a small number of people would use it in their sane mind even though there is capacity to serve much more people at no additional expense for the provider (nor for the environment) suggests there is no reason to keep prices this high.