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This shows up every once in a while in rants against telcos but "price per kB of text message" is a completely pointless metric because no one really cares abou

This shows up every once in a while in rants against telcos but "price per kB of text message" is a completely pointless metric because no one really cares about it. On one side the company has to operate the network, pay the employees and still generate some profit, so they care about total ROI. On the other, the customer wants to communicate, which includes text messages, voice and data transmission, so they care about the price of that bundle which often just includes unlimited texts. How many people really want the services they use to be priced like AWS and pay separately a few cents for each time they use any tiny component? And is it really a market failure when they're not billed like that or can you Google "market failure"?

pyre 14y ago
Why is it then that the US cellular providers are the only ones that charge for incoming texts? This doesn't seem like a case where if they didn't charge for it, their entire business model would collapse. At least for US cellular providers, it's very clearly a tactic to push people towards paying monthly for 'unlimited text messaging' by attempting to make the per-message pricing prohibitively expensive. The "illusion of options" so to speak. Providing you with multiple options, but making sure that only one of the options makes economic sense (ensuring that the majority of people choose it).
- spindritf 14y ago
  > Why is it then that the US cellular providers are the only ones that charge for incoming texts? Why would anyone care how their bill is sliced? Why do you care about anything beyond the total cost of owning a (smart)phone per month or year? Incoming texts, outgoing texts, network upkeep... it's a meaningless line on the bill. Sure, some configurations will be a little better for you, some will be a little better for someone else depending on your usage pattern but in the end telcos have to pay their own bills, and have something on top for their investors, so they'll charge you somehow for something.
  - manaskarekar 14y ago
    It matters because not all users use all the services. The ones who use the services that bear the burden of 'paying the bills for the carriers' are the ones who are subsidizing other services for you.
  - pyre 14y ago
    It doesn't help when the telcos are dishonest about their pricing structures/rules. E.g. claiming that the early termination fees were 'to recover the subsidized cost of the phone' when the ETFs were a flat fee (no matter if you terminated the contract when it was 10% complete or 90% complete). You can say that it's 'their prerogative' to charge a fee for breaking the contract, and that's fine[1]. It's when they try to twist the truth to make it not sound so harsh that it really irks me. [1] The contracts also don't have to be so one-sided. If I need to be penalized for early termination of the contract, why isn't the telco also penalized if they terminate the contract early? AFAIK, there is something in the law about contracts needing to have equal consideration for both sides. If a contract is too one-sided, then it (or at least parts it) can be ruled invalid.
- shenberg 14y ago
  The most expensive resource for a cellular provider is RF spectrum. You use that up when you receive a call or text too, so it might actually make more sense to charge for both, but consumers are so used to only paying for outgoing calls that they don't care.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    Text messages are piggy-backed onto status/control messages that would be sent regardless, and the slot length is fixed so a shorter / longer message does not change the bandwidth requirement at all. This is the origin of the limited length of these messages.
    - shenberg 14y ago
      You need to get an active channel with the network, which means to tell a cell that you want to talk to it, have it allocate resources for you, get the SMS and send an ACK. It's true that if you already have a data channel active (e.g. you're talking to someone) then you piggy-back the SMS and ACK on it (with audible degradation in audio quality in 2g connections), but that isn't the case most of the time.
wissler 14y ago
... a completely pointless metric because no one really cares about it Bullshit. I care that they charge for text messages at all. I want my phone service to be mere plumbing and leave the services on the phone to me and third parties. They should only charge for raw data usage, and that means that text messaging should be virtually free.
manaskarekar 14y ago
>How many people really want the services they use to be priced like AWS and pay separately a few cents for each time they use any tiny component? Please correct me if I'm reading this incorrectly, but you're suggesting that most people don't want to pay for exactly how much they use a service?
- spindritf 14y ago
  That's exactly what I'm saying. Most people, regardless of what they claim, want to buy the feeling of safety that comes with the assurance that they'll be able to use the service when they need to. Obviously, for as little as possible. That's the secret of those "unlimited", and heavily oversubscribed, plans, hosting services, all you can eat buffets, medical insurance that includes a subscription to $8/mo birth-control pills... All those companies capitalize on "being there for you".
  - Firehed 14y ago
    And yet nobody seems to complain that all of our other utilities are charged based on usage: electricity, gas, water, landline phones (remember those?). I'm aware that it's a lot harder to judge data use than it is for water, so there's a reasonable objection to usage-based billing for data services. That being said, the only reason I've gone out of my way to keep my grandfathered unlimited cell phone data is because the blocks of pre-metered data a) are hugely overpriced, b) excessively penalized for overages, c) not tiered in a way that's relevant to real-world use, and d) seem to increase in cost over time rather than decrease, despite plummeting costs for the provider (while usage patterns increase) The unlimited psychology is utter nonsense. None of these services[1] cut you off completely for going over your allotment, they just charge punitive rates. They're still "there for you", as long as you're ok getting reamed in the wallet. [1] except prepaid phone minutes, but that's because there's no card on file to charge for overages.
  - manaskarekar 14y ago
    I disagree. The thing that "unlimited" plans help you cope with are the sticker shock. Oversubcribed services, such as data plans, count on someone not using their data that they're paying for. So if you use 200 MB of your 2GB plan, you paid for someone else's data. If the carriers start charging per MB what they deem profitable, the user who doesn't use as much bandwidth will save money while the one who uses more will have to pay more. I understand carriers need a certain guarantee on sales figures to continue investing in infrastructure/upgrades etc but there are other services that have worked great without this model. Then you also have your QoS argument. Why should I pay the same amount for data if I have to put up with slow page loads on my smartphone because ten other people around me are streaming Netflix? So basically, this is just marketing bullshit. To abstract away the real cost of the service so the sticker shock doesn't put you off. Also, the pay in advance model urges you to use a service more, where as pay as you use model promotes need based usage. This will perhaps, to some degree, promote less 'wastage' for any service as well. Ever had to 'burn off' your cell phone minutes because, 'I've paid for it anyway.' I know I would save a ton of money if they just charged me for what I used even if they raised their rates per unit for any given service.
wildranter 14y ago
You forgot jet fuel. It's skyrocketing these days.
lloeki 14y ago
> On one side the company has to operate the network, pay the employees and still generate some profit, so they care about total ROI. While broadband access via DSL is among the cheapest in France, the historical three physical mobile network owners (SFR, Orange and Bouygues) were (and still are) offering obscure, ridiculously contrived and absurdly priced two year contracts going north of 50€ with 2 hours talk, 1GB data from the phone, unlimited SMS and a free useless option[0], to which you're supposed to add a full 25€ just for tethering. That's after having been struck by justice's mighty hammer for secretly coordinating prices. Then about a year ago, Free Mobile entered the mobile market in France. For a 20€/mo contract you can bail out of anytime, you get unlimited voice, SMS, MMS and HSPA+ (there's virtually no LTE deployed here yet anyway) usable as tethering or with VoIP, downgraded to slower speed past the 3GB/mo barrier. Basically a "just makes sense" contract from a data and a consumer point of view. Earth shaking prices all the while they're investing in infrastructure to build their own network, while at the same time paying a MVNO deal to Orange as a fallback in not yet covered areas. Public reaction from the old guard was ranging from outraged ("they'll destroy the whole market! people will lose their work! frogs will pour down the sky!") to shameless excuses ("no, we did not rip you off for years, we promise!") to bewildered ("how the hell can they be so cheap?") to FUD ("you'll see! it's just a marketing ploy to gather critical mass! prices will rise!") to speechless (""). Curiously, almost 12 month later, all prices have been falling down. The closest to Free right now is Sosh, a MVNO operated by Orange, which started to offer similar contracts. Still subscribable only online (so John Doe really has no clue about it when he goes shopping around the mall, which is what the bulk of customers do) and their marketing used to be misleading in various areas, like they were offering only HSDPA. Just checked and things changed a bit as they now offer 2GB HSDPA for 20€ or 2GB HSPA+ for 25€. Not quite that but getting there. So well, there's ROI, and there's maximizing profits. [0]: useless options as in: - double hours for free between 4PM and 6PM on raising moon days and 2AM to 7AM otherwise. - TV on the phone, via an app that does not work via WiFi (you know, for authentication), offers limited channels at crap quality and constantly tries to upsell you more channels. - GPS navigation on the phone, via a disaster of an app. Think Apple Maps is a failure? You ain't seen nothing. - free youtube and social networks access! OMG lolzor! but through their custom app. With content ads. - five music tracks per month, for free, WMA DRMized via some proprietary auth+download platform of course. Super useful when you bought an iPhone from them with the same contract. - football (== soccer) SMS alerts on goals! Yay, like people interested in this are not watching the games live already.

pyre 14y ago

Why is it then that the US cellular providers are the only ones that charge for incoming texts? This doesn't seem like a case where if they didn't charge for it, their entire business model would collapse. At least for US cellular providers, it's very clearly a tactic to push people towards paying monthly for 'unlimited text messaging' by attempting to make the per-message pricing prohibitively expensive. The "illusion of options" so to speak. Providing you with multiple options, but making sure that only one of the options makes economic sense (ensuring that the majority of people choose it).

spindritf 14y ago
> Why is it then that the US cellular providers are the only ones that charge for incoming texts? Why would anyone care how their bill is sliced? Why do you care about anything beyond the total cost of owning a (smart)phone per month or year? Incoming texts, outgoing texts, network upkeep... it's a meaningless line on the bill. Sure, some configurations will be a little better for you, some will be a little better for someone else depending on your usage pattern but in the end telcos have to pay their own bills, and have something on top for their investors, so they'll charge you somehow for something.
- manaskarekar 14y ago
  It matters because not all users use all the services. The ones who use the services that bear the burden of 'paying the bills for the carriers' are the ones who are subsidizing other services for you.
- pyre 14y ago
  It doesn't help when the telcos are dishonest about their pricing structures/rules. E.g. claiming that the early termination fees were 'to recover the subsidized cost of the phone' when the ETFs were a flat fee (no matter if you terminated the contract when it was 10% complete or 90% complete). You can say that it's 'their prerogative' to charge a fee for breaking the contract, and that's fine[1]. It's when they try to twist the truth to make it not sound so harsh that it really irks me. [1] The contracts also don't have to be so one-sided. If I need to be penalized for early termination of the contract, why isn't the telco also penalized if they terminate the contract early? AFAIK, there is something in the law about contracts needing to have equal consideration for both sides. If a contract is too one-sided, then it (or at least parts it) can be ruled invalid.
shenberg 14y ago
The most expensive resource for a cellular provider is RF spectrum. You use that up when you receive a call or text too, so it might actually make more sense to charge for both, but consumers are so used to only paying for outgoing calls that they don't care.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  Text messages are piggy-backed onto status/control messages that would be sent regardless, and the slot length is fixed so a shorter / longer message does not change the bandwidth requirement at all. This is the origin of the limited length of these messages.
  - shenberg 14y ago
    You need to get an active channel with the network, which means to tell a cell that you want to talk to it, have it allocate resources for you, get the SMS and send an ACK. It's true that if you already have a data channel active (e.g. you're talking to someone) then you piggy-back the SMS and ACK on it (with audible degradation in audio quality in 2g connections), but that isn't the case most of the time.

wissler 14y ago

... a completely pointless metric because no one really cares about it Bullshit. I care that they charge for text messages at all. I want my phone service to be mere plumbing and leave the services on the phone to me and third parties. They should only charge for raw data usage, and that means that text messaging should be virtually free.

manaskarekar 14y ago

>How many people really want the services they use to be priced like AWS and pay separately a few cents for each time they use any tiny component? Please correct me if I'm reading this incorrectly, but you're suggesting that most people don't want to pay for exactly how much they use a service?

spindritf 14y ago
That's exactly what I'm saying. Most people, regardless of what they claim, want to buy the feeling of safety that comes with the assurance that they'll be able to use the service when they need to. Obviously, for as little as possible. That's the secret of those "unlimited", and heavily oversubscribed, plans, hosting services, all you can eat buffets, medical insurance that includes a subscription to $8/mo birth-control pills... All those companies capitalize on "being there for you".
- Firehed 14y ago
  And yet nobody seems to complain that all of our other utilities are charged based on usage: electricity, gas, water, landline phones (remember those?). I'm aware that it's a lot harder to judge data use than it is for water, so there's a reasonable objection to usage-based billing for data services. That being said, the only reason I've gone out of my way to keep my grandfathered unlimited cell phone data is because the blocks of pre-metered data a) are hugely overpriced, b) excessively penalized for overages, c) not tiered in a way that's relevant to real-world use, and d) seem to increase in cost over time rather than decrease, despite plummeting costs for the provider (while usage patterns increase) The unlimited psychology is utter nonsense. None of these services[1] cut you off completely for going over your allotment, they just charge punitive rates. They're still "there for you", as long as you're ok getting reamed in the wallet. [1] except prepaid phone minutes, but that's because there's no card on file to charge for overages.
- manaskarekar 14y ago
  I disagree. The thing that "unlimited" plans help you cope with are the sticker shock. Oversubcribed services, such as data plans, count on someone not using their data that they're paying for. So if you use 200 MB of your 2GB plan, you paid for someone else's data. If the carriers start charging per MB what they deem profitable, the user who doesn't use as much bandwidth will save money while the one who uses more will have to pay more. I understand carriers need a certain guarantee on sales figures to continue investing in infrastructure/upgrades etc but there are other services that have worked great without this model. Then you also have your QoS argument. Why should I pay the same amount for data if I have to put up with slow page loads on my smartphone because ten other people around me are streaming Netflix? So basically, this is just marketing bullshit. To abstract away the real cost of the service so the sticker shock doesn't put you off. Also, the pay in advance model urges you to use a service more, where as pay as you use model promotes need based usage. This will perhaps, to some degree, promote less 'wastage' for any service as well. Ever had to 'burn off' your cell phone minutes because, 'I've paid for it anyway.' I know I would save a ton of money if they just charged me for what I used even if they raised their rates per unit for any given service.

wildranter 14y ago

You forgot jet fuel. It's skyrocketing these days.

lloeki 14y ago

> On one side the company has to operate the network, pay the employees and still generate some profit, so they care about total ROI. While broadband access via DSL is among the cheapest in France, the historical three physical mobile network owners (SFR, Orange and Bouygues) were (and still are) offering obscure, ridiculously contrived and absurdly priced two year contracts going north of 50€ with 2 hours talk, 1GB data from the phone, unlimited SMS and a free useless option[0], to which you're supposed to add a full 25€ just for tethering. That's after having been struck by justice's mighty hammer for secretly coordinating prices. Then about a year ago, Free Mobile entered the mobile market in France. For a 20€/mo contract you can bail out of anytime, you get unlimited voice, SMS, MMS and HSPA+ (there's virtually no LTE deployed here yet anyway) usable as tethering or with VoIP, downgraded to slower speed past the 3GB/mo barrier. Basically a "just makes sense" contract from a data and a consumer point of view. Earth shaking prices all the while they're investing in infrastructure to build their own network, while at the same time paying a MVNO deal to Orange as a fallback in not yet covered areas. Public reaction from the old guard was ranging from outraged ("they'll destroy the whole market! people will lose their work! frogs will pour down the sky!") to shameless excuses ("no, we did not rip you off for years, we promise!") to bewildered ("how the hell can they be so cheap?") to FUD ("you'll see! it's just a marketing ploy to gather critical mass! prices will rise!") to speechless (""). Curiously, almost 12 month later, all prices have been falling down. The closest to Free right now is Sosh, a MVNO operated by Orange, which started to offer similar contracts. Still subscribable only online (so John Doe really has no clue about it when he goes shopping around the mall, which is what the bulk of customers do) and their marketing used to be misleading in various areas, like they were offering only HSDPA. Just checked and things changed a bit as they now offer 2GB HSDPA for 20€ or 2GB HSPA+ for 25€. Not quite that but getting there. So well, there's ROI, and there's maximizing profits. [0]: useless options as in: - double hours for free between 4PM and 6PM on raising moon days and 2AM to 7AM otherwise. - TV on the phone, via an app that does not work via WiFi (you know, for authentication), offers limited channels at crap quality and constantly tries to upsell you more channels. - GPS navigation on the phone, via a disaster of an app. Think Apple Maps is a failure? You ain't seen nothing. - free youtube and social networks access! OMG lolzor! but through their custom app. With content ads. - five music tracks per month, for free, WMA DRMized via some proprietary auth+download platform of course. Super useful when you bought an iPhone from them with the same contract. - football (== soccer) SMS alerts on goals! Yay, like people interested in this are not watching the games live already.