4 ms·

Text messages are 20 cents each, or $5,000 per megabyte. Wow.

by grinich 17y ago

pyre 17y ago
IIRC, with some carriers it can even be $35/message. The part that irks me the most is,"You get charged 20c/message to receive messages. Oh, and by the way there is no way for you to prevent a text message from being sent to you."
- tumult 17y ago
  You can have SMS blocked, but you have to call them and request it specifically. I believe the salespeople try to frighten you into getting one, warning you of the dangers of receiving an SMS without a plan.
- qw 17y ago
  That must be an American thing. I've never heard of someone having to pay for incoming messages.
  - elai 17y ago
    It's a recent can&usa thing (was introduced in canada several months ago). It's very likely just a scheme to coerce most subscribers to get a text messaging plan and boost their ARPU by $3 to $10 dollars, since all of the 'plans' have free incoming texts.
  - dkersten 17y ago
    Definitely a north-american thing, I have not seen it in any other part of the world.
  - electromagnetic 17y ago
    I hadn't either, but then I was from the UK. I moved to Canada and they started bringing it in, I was thankful I was on Rogers who didn't introduce it . . . and then the recession hit and they BS-backtracked and implemented it. Oh well, time to hunt the unlimited smartphone data plans.
    - pyre 17y ago
      Too bad about being in Canada. Canadian data plans suck compared to the US ones. The US doesn't have that much competition for cell plans, but Canada has even less (2 carriers; Bell or Rogers).
      - electromagnetic 17y ago
        Agreed the competition is bad, there are more carriers in ontario, however they're either the big three, or a second brand name for one of the big three (Bell, Rogers and Telus). Bell has access to the unlimited data plans, and now has a phone worth it (in the Palm Pre). However Bell's customer service is appalling. Basically unless you contact the BBB every time you have a problem, nothing will get done.
- pyre 17y ago
  Whoa... just re-read my post and that was supposed to be $0.35/message... not $35/message. O.o It's too late to edit it though. Sorry for the mis-information. But as others have said 20-35 cents per message can add up pretty quickly. The entire point of that price is to convince you that it's better to just pay the $10/month for unlimited text messaging. I mean text messages are a max of 140 characters. That's a minuscule amount of information in comparison to voice calls or data plans (checking email,websites,etc) yet they charge an arm and a leg for it.
aditya 17y ago
It is quite a coup, especially because text messages are essentially free to the carrier: Looking for a data pipeline that would fit these micro messages, Hillebrand came up with the idea to harness a secondary radio channel that already existed on mobile networks. This smaller data lane had been used only to alert a cellphone about reception strength and to supply it with bits of information regarding incoming calls. Voice communication itself had taken place via a separate signal. "We were looking to a cheap implementation," Hillebrand said on the phone from Bonn. "Most of the time, nothing happens on this control link. So, it was free capacity on the system." via: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/invented-text-messaging.html http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/invented-...
- dkersten 17y ago
  Maybe for the radio part of it, but between cell tower and service center (and vice versa), SMS goes over the signaling links - which are also used for call setup, notifications, WAP push, and routing queries. Theres nothing free about them, theres no such a thing as free in the telco world - everything costs someone something, though I agree, SMS is extremely cheap for the carrier - definitely NOT worth paying 20 cent for. Carriers love SMS for that exact reason. Having said that, SMS can also cause the carrier a world of pain... I obviously can't provide any details, but one specific network had a problem where two thirds of all signaling traffic was caused by some virus which a large percentage of their customers' phones were infected with. This was costing them many thousands a day! Thankfully, we were able to block these messages at an early stage in the transaction and reduce network traffic by a substantial amount and over the air traffic by about half.
  - a-priori 17y ago
    They are essentially free, because the carriers provide no delivery guarantees for SMS messages. That is, if the channel is busy with other signalling traffic, then SMS messages will be silently dropped.
    - dkersten 17y ago
rw 17y ago
I saw a great writeup explaining how it is cheaper to send an equivalent amount of data to one of the Voyager spacecrafts, than it is to send it by SMS.
- aditya 17y ago
  link?
  - rudyfink 17y ago
    This seems to be the source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/14/txts_r_v_pricey/comments/#c_223288 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/14/txts_r_v_pricey/comm...

Text messages are 20 cents each, or $5,000 per megabyte. Wow.

by grinich 17y ago

Text messages are 20 cents each, or $5,000 per megabyte. Wow.

pyre 17y ago

IIRC, with some carriers it can even be $35/message. The part that irks me the most is,"You get charged 20c/message to receive messages. Oh, and by the way there is no way for you to prevent a text message from being sent to you."

tumult 17y ago
You can have SMS blocked, but you have to call them and request it specifically. I believe the salespeople try to frighten you into getting one, warning you of the dangers of receiving an SMS without a plan.
qw 17y ago
That must be an American thing. I've never heard of someone having to pay for incoming messages.
- elai 17y ago
  It's a recent can&usa thing (was introduced in canada several months ago). It's very likely just a scheme to coerce most subscribers to get a text messaging plan and boost their ARPU by $3 to $10 dollars, since all of the 'plans' have free incoming texts.
- dkersten 17y ago
  Definitely a north-american thing, I have not seen it in any other part of the world.
- electromagnetic 17y ago
  I hadn't either, but then I was from the UK. I moved to Canada and they started bringing it in, I was thankful I was on Rogers who didn't introduce it . . . and then the recession hit and they BS-backtracked and implemented it. Oh well, time to hunt the unlimited smartphone data plans.
  - pyre 17y ago
    Too bad about being in Canada. Canadian data plans suck compared to the US ones. The US doesn't have that much competition for cell plans, but Canada has even less (2 carriers; Bell or Rogers).
    - electromagnetic 17y ago
      Agreed the competition is bad, there are more carriers in ontario, however they're either the big three, or a second brand name for one of the big three (Bell, Rogers and Telus). Bell has access to the unlimited data plans, and now has a phone worth it (in the Palm Pre). However Bell's customer service is appalling. Basically unless you contact the BBB every time you have a problem, nothing will get done.
pyre 17y ago
Whoa... just re-read my post and that was supposed to be $0.35/message... not $35/message. O.o It's too late to edit it though. Sorry for the mis-information. But as others have said 20-35 cents per message can add up pretty quickly. The entire point of that price is to convince you that it's better to just pay the $10/month for unlimited text messaging. I mean text messages are a max of 140 characters. That's a minuscule amount of information in comparison to voice calls or data plans (checking email,websites,etc) yet they charge an arm and a leg for it.

aditya 17y ago

It is quite a coup, especially because text messages are essentially free to the carrier: Looking for a data pipeline that would fit these micro messages, Hillebrand came up with the idea to harness a secondary radio channel that already existed on mobile networks. This smaller data lane had been used only to alert a cellphone about reception strength and to supply it with bits of information regarding incoming calls. Voice communication itself had taken place via a separate signal. "We were looking to a cheap implementation," Hillebrand said on the phone from Bonn. "Most of the time, nothing happens on this control link. So, it was free capacity on the system." via: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/invented-text-messaging.html http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/invented-...

dkersten 17y ago
Maybe for the radio part of it, but between cell tower and service center (and vice versa), SMS goes over the signaling links - which are also used for call setup, notifications, WAP push, and routing queries. Theres nothing free about them, theres no such a thing as free in the telco world - everything costs someone something, though I agree, SMS is extremely cheap for the carrier - definitely NOT worth paying 20 cent for. Carriers love SMS for that exact reason. Having said that, SMS can also cause the carrier a world of pain... I obviously can't provide any details, but one specific network had a problem where two thirds of all signaling traffic was caused by some virus which a large percentage of their customers' phones were infected with. This was costing them many thousands a day! Thankfully, we were able to block these messages at an early stage in the transaction and reduce network traffic by a substantial amount and over the air traffic by about half.
- a-priori 17y ago
  They are essentially free, because the carriers provide no delivery guarantees for SMS messages. That is, if the channel is busy with other signalling traffic, then SMS messages will be silently dropped.
  - dkersten 17y ago

rw 17y ago

I saw a great writeup explaining how it is cheaper to send an equivalent amount of data to one of the Voyager spacecrafts, than it is to send it by SMS.

aditya 17y ago
link?
- rudyfink 17y ago
  This seems to be the source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/14/txts_r_v_pricey/comments/#c_223288 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/14/txts_r_v_pricey/comm...