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> Too bad, you have to pay for unlimited text anyway. Which is a massive lie right there (from t-mobile). SMS is effectively piggybacking on the signals your p

by fein 14y ago

> Too bad, you have to pay for unlimited text anyway. Which is a massive lie right there (from t-mobile). SMS is effectively piggybacking on the signals your phone sends out to find which towers are available, so were t-mobile being totally honest, they'd just cut out the SMS charge period. It's such a low cost (borderline free) to process and send SMS's that there is really no honest way to charge for it. But we live in America, where tech literacy is abysmal for 75% of the inhabitants, and Telco's capitalize on this. Either that or we don't have a single honest Telco CEO.

thaumasiotes 14y ago
> SMS is effectively piggybacking on the signals your phone sends out to find which towers are available, so were t-mobile being totally honest, they'd just cut out the SMS charge period. What exactly is the difference between "cut[ting] out the SMS charge" and including unlimited texting in every plan? EDIT: let's see if I can wrap some more words around my point. Your parent post is complaining that t-mobile doesn't want to offer a plan which is differentiated from some current plan of theirs by (a) offering lower texting allowances, and (b) being cheaper. You think that, since the cost of transmitting texts is nil, t-mobile shouldn't charge for transmitting them. And by looking at the plans t-mobile wants to offer, we can see that they agree with you; they don't think it makes sense to charge more for a plan with higher texting allowances vs one with lower allowances. No matter how much texting you do, they're going to charge you exactly the same. (Your argument is phrased in moral terms, while I suspect t-mobile's position is driven more by the fact that an unlimited data plan is a perfect substitute for texting.) But, instead of slamming your parent post for wanting something that makes no sense (plans that charge extra for more texting), you're slamming t-mobile for "dishonest pricing" that reflects exactly what you believe should be happening. I don't get it.
- fein 14y ago
  > But, instead of slamming your parent post for wanting something that makes no sense I'm not slamming the parent, just T-mobile rephrasing a still predatory model.
  - thaumasiotes 14y ago
    What do you mean? T-mobile's model is exactly the model you said they should have. Texting is free. There is no way to pay them to carry your texts (if you're on a plan with unlimited data). Do you want them to offer $50 / month calling and data with 50 texts alongside $50 / month calling and data with unlimited texts? How would that be an improvement?
    - fein 14y ago
      Straight Talk, for example, offers an unlimited 1 year plan for what works out to be $41 a month. I can use an unlocked phone and change out sim cards for international travel. It's $45/mo if you pay monthly. T-Mobile is rather unattractive at $70/month on a BYOP plan. edit: Tmo's plan has a data cap on the $50/mo setup. Straight Talk does not.
      - JoshTriplett 14y ago
        Straight Talk definitely does, they just don't tell you very clearly what it is. Do some searching, and you'll find quite a few reports of people who get cut off for downloading more data than Straight Talk expects. They also very specifically prohibit video and audio streaming, and several other high-bandwidth activities.
        fein 14y ago
        Remove the proxy they use on your phone. Don't downvote until you know what you're speaking on.
mcpherrinm 14y ago
> SMS is effectively piggybacking on the signals your phone sends out to find which towers are available This argument bugs me. The phone-to-tower is only a portion of the infrastructure: You have to get those messages somewhere after that. But the rest of that infrastructure isn't any more interesting than email. So I'm not disagreeing with the point that SMS is overpriced (especially without a plan). I doubt you could convince anybody to spend $10/month on "unlimited email".
- kyrias 14y ago
  And then you also have to pay other carriers to deliver SMS to their custemers.
- rurounijones 14y ago
  When SMS first exploded in popularity back in the day a friend of mine worked at BT (British Telecom) and pointed out that the entire network's SMS traffic was handled by 3 mid-range sun sparc servers. Since SMS was originally designed to use management channels it was already built into the general infrastructure, they just needed to up the server count to 3. SMS was (and maybe still is?) almost pure profit for at least BT and I imagine other carriers.
smutticus 14y ago
>SMS is effectively piggybacking on the signals your phone sends out to find which towers are available, so were t-mobile being totally honest, they'd just cut out the SMS charge period. It's still data and they still need to provision timeslots for it and transfer it. There is no free lunch. SMS goes over the signalling timeslot, in ISDN terms this is called the D-channel. D-channels cannot carry voice traffic. So provisioning more timeslots for D-channels, and consequently SMS, means that at a given tower and frequency you will have fewer timeslots for voice. So SMS has a cost. This analysis is not taking into account the cost of transferring SMS over the wired infrastructure as well.
- asynchronous13 14y ago
  In this case it is a free lunch. SMS was specifically designed to make use of an unused portion of communication between handset and tower. Thus, the limit of 1,120 bits (140 8-bit chars, or the now standard 160 7-bit chars). No extra time slots are needed to accomodate SMS, because it's bandwidth usage is dramatically lower than that of voice data. As you said, it's still data. If one has a plan that includes unlimited internet data, where is the justification to charge even more for SMS? But none of that really matters, because it's not the cost of the product that determines pricing. It's the delivered value that determines pricing.

by fein 14y ago

thaumasiotes 14y ago

> SMS is effectively piggybacking on the signals your phone sends out to find which towers are available, so were t-mobile being totally honest, they'd just cut out the SMS charge period. What exactly is the difference between "cut[ting] out the SMS charge" and including unlimited texting in every plan? EDIT: let's see if I can wrap some more words around my point. Your parent post is complaining that t-mobile doesn't want to offer a plan which is differentiated from some current plan of theirs by (a) offering lower texting allowances, and (b) being cheaper. You think that, since the cost of transmitting texts is nil, t-mobile shouldn't charge for transmitting them. And by looking at the plans t-mobile wants to offer, we can see that they agree with you; they don't think it makes sense to charge more for a plan with higher texting allowances vs one with lower allowances. No matter how much texting you do, they're going to charge you exactly the same. (Your argument is phrased in moral terms, while I suspect t-mobile's position is driven more by the fact that an unlimited data plan is a perfect substitute for texting.) But, instead of slamming your parent post for wanting something that makes no sense (plans that charge extra for more texting), you're slamming t-mobile for "dishonest pricing" that reflects exactly what you believe should be happening. I don't get it.

fein 14y ago
> But, instead of slamming your parent post for wanting something that makes no sense I'm not slamming the parent, just T-mobile rephrasing a still predatory model.
- thaumasiotes 14y ago
  What do you mean? T-mobile's model is exactly the model you said they should have. Texting is free. There is no way to pay them to carry your texts (if you're on a plan with unlimited data). Do you want them to offer $50 / month calling and data with 50 texts alongside $50 / month calling and data with unlimited texts? How would that be an improvement?
  - fein 14y ago
    Straight Talk, for example, offers an unlimited 1 year plan for what works out to be $41 a month. I can use an unlocked phone and change out sim cards for international travel. It's $45/mo if you pay monthly. T-Mobile is rather unattractive at $70/month on a BYOP plan. edit: Tmo's plan has a data cap on the $50/mo setup. Straight Talk does not.
    - JoshTriplett 14y ago
      Straight Talk definitely does, they just don't tell you very clearly what it is. Do some searching, and you'll find quite a few reports of people who get cut off for downloading more data than Straight Talk expects. They also very specifically prohibit video and audio streaming, and several other high-bandwidth activities.
      - fein 14y ago
        Remove the proxy they use on your phone. Don't downvote until you know what you're speaking on.

mcpherrinm 14y ago

> SMS is effectively piggybacking on the signals your phone sends out to find which towers are available This argument bugs me. The phone-to-tower is only a portion of the infrastructure: You have to get those messages somewhere after that. But the rest of that infrastructure isn't any more interesting than email. So I'm not disagreeing with the point that SMS is overpriced (especially without a plan). I doubt you could convince anybody to spend $10/month on "unlimited email".

kyrias 14y ago
And then you also have to pay other carriers to deliver SMS to their custemers.
rurounijones 14y ago
When SMS first exploded in popularity back in the day a friend of mine worked at BT (British Telecom) and pointed out that the entire network's SMS traffic was handled by 3 mid-range sun sparc servers. Since SMS was originally designed to use management channels it was already built into the general infrastructure, they just needed to up the server count to 3. SMS was (and maybe still is?) almost pure profit for at least BT and I imagine other carriers.

smutticus 14y ago

>SMS is effectively piggybacking on the signals your phone sends out to find which towers are available, so were t-mobile being totally honest, they'd just cut out the SMS charge period. It's still data and they still need to provision timeslots for it and transfer it. There is no free lunch. SMS goes over the signalling timeslot, in ISDN terms this is called the D-channel. D-channels cannot carry voice traffic. So provisioning more timeslots for D-channels, and consequently SMS, means that at a given tower and frequency you will have fewer timeslots for voice. So SMS has a cost. This analysis is not taking into account the cost of transferring SMS over the wired infrastructure as well.

asynchronous13 14y ago
In this case it is a free lunch. SMS was specifically designed to make use of an unused portion of communication between handset and tower. Thus, the limit of 1,120 bits (140 8-bit chars, or the now standard 160 7-bit chars). No extra time slots are needed to accomodate SMS, because it's bandwidth usage is dramatically lower than that of voice data. As you said, it's still data. If one has a plan that includes unlimited internet data, where is the justification to charge even more for SMS? But none of that really matters, because it's not the cost of the product that determines pricing. It's the delivered value that determines pricing.