What Carriers Aren’t Eager to Tell You About Texting

jT · Post by jT » Mon Dec 29, 2008 9:46 am

It's no surprise, but it's a good read anyhow on our cell phone companies ripping us off..

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28digi.html

hansken_yo · Post by **hansken_yo** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 10:23 am

can't read it cause I'm not an exclusive member

Post by **racer12306** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 10:43 am

Mind posting the article

jT · Post by jT » Mon Dec 29, 2008 1:51 pm

i'm not a member either and the link worked for me.. odd! well fixed the link, should work now

Post by **racer12306** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 2:20 pm

meh, could care less. IMO, you can't look at it as they are making a killing off of this. I look at it as this:

My last bill had 2283 sent and received text messages and 67 sent and received picture/video messages, on my line only. My fiances phone had 546 sent and received text messages and 9 sent and received picture/video messages.

So a grand total of 2829 text messages and 76 picture/video messages. I pay an extra $30 per month to have this feature.

If I were to pay per text it would cost (at $0.20 per text and $0.45 per picture/video (last price I knew pic/vid messages cost) message) it would cost: $600 extra per month in messages.

What they charge is what they charge and I'd much rather pay $30 per month than $600 per month in addition to the normal airtime charges.

jetas · Post by **jetas** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 3:03 pm

sullivan · Post by **sullivan** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 3:07 pm

i pay 25 bucks a month, which gets me
-Unlimited texting( incoming, and outgoing)
-Unlimited Browswer(internet,picture messages ect)
-Unlimited minutes(after 6pm daily)
-5 cents a minute otherwise
-msg center
-mobile email account

the only downside i see is im locked into a 3 year plan, and when you break a phone its like $300 for another decent phone..... but after i broke my blackberry pearl, i was like f**k that im not paying for another 300, so i bought a lg rumour for $110, on prepaid (was 300 on my plan) then walked 60 feet down to another wireless store in our mall , and got the phone transffered onto my plan for free....worth it if you ask me (saved me $190+)

Passt · Post by **Passt** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 3:43 pm

sullivan wrote:i pay 25 bucks a month, which gets me
-Unlimited texting( incoming, and outgoing)
-Unlimited Browswer(internet,picture messages ect)
-Unlimited minutes(after 6pm daily)
-5 cents a minute otherwise
-msg center
-mobile email account

the only downside i see is im locked into a 3 year plan, and when you break a phone its like $300 for another decent phone..... but after i broke my blackberry pearl, i was like f**k that im not paying for another 300, so i bought a lg rumour for $110, on prepaid (was 300 on my plan) then walked 60 feet down to another wireless store in our mall , and got the phone transffered onto my plan for free....worth it if you ask me (saved me $190+)

What the fuck service do you have? I pay $94 a month when all is said and done. I have T-mobile, who I've had nothing but good experiences with, but damn. That is so much cheaper than mine.

Fuzzyneon · Post by **Fuzzyneon** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 3:47 pm

i send 6000-8000 texts a month and pay 20 bucks more(sidekick unlimited plan) unlimited texts, internet,instant messanger,email

even at 10cents a message ewith 6k texts 600 bucks with out a plan the plan is well worth it eh

MoxHair · Post by **MoxHair** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 4:36 pm

$25 a month BBY Manager Plan (AT&T)

Unlimited Minutes
Unlimited Text
Unlimited Picture/Multimedia Messages
Unlimited Internet
Unlimited everything else

I send anywhere from 5000 to 12000 texts a month (depends on who I'm "dating" or hanging out with). One of my bills showed up in a BOX it had so many lines of Texts on it. Had to switch to the Online Statements because of it. I can only imagine how much my bill would be if I didn't have unlimited everything.

GreeNeons03 · Post by **GreeNeons03** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 4:45 pm

I got the Simply Everything plan from Sprint. I get unlimited EVERYTHING, text, talk, data, email, internet, GPS, and more, 99.99 a month.

jT · Post by jT » Mon Dec 29, 2008 8:13 pm

the "point" isnt really about unlimited plans vs pay per message plans.. it's that the companies are charging you for something that they dont really need to charge you for.. other than out of pure profit motivation.

yes thats the american way but when you think about a service you are paying for you "expect" there to be some rational for the cost.. in this case you might unknowingly expect that sending a text message is some huge deal that takes its own special network or -something- that the company had to pay for to enable text messaging... NOT that the text messages are being sent on an existing packet of data that would be sent anyways regardless of whether or not you are texting anyone..

its pure greed to charge for text messaging.. when an average plan ranges from $30/month to $100/month is there really a need to make sure you get that additional charge for text messages JUST to be greedy?

hansken_yo · Post by **hansken_yo** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 8:18 pm

Charging for the message doesn't bother me at all since your paying for a service. What really gets my goat is that they also charge you to receive a message, something that you have little control over to keep from happening unless you disable the whole service all together. Before I purchased my plan I could not not receive a text message sent to me and I got charged for it!!!! Fuck that shit. I send one it is my choice, I fully except the fee then...

I just noticed I'm rambling. -- Exit soap box.

Adionik · Post by **Adionik** » Mon Dec 29, 2008 9:29 pm

I pay $35 a month

Unlimited EVERYTHING.

-Pic messaging
-Local and Long Distance
-Texting
-Texting to mexico

-411
-Internet

oh and it's prepaid...I love Texas

J-Villa · Post by **J-Villa** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 12:35 am

they don't have to let you use it. that's why they charge you.

You pay for a service, just like any other business.

sprint is only 10 bucks for unlimited texting. lol

Shop around, don't stay with just one carrier all your life.

jT · Post by jT » Tue Dec 30, 2008 9:52 am

verizon's unlimited text plan used to be $5/mo.. then they increased it to $10.. why?

greed.

it's not like an internet service provider that has high bandwidth users who has to turn around and pay higher fees to the backbone provider for more usage because of the users.. therefore increasing the cost to the users... the text messaging "service" is there whether or not it is being used.. so why the crazy prices? why the increase in prices? theres no technology behind the service to maintain or upgrade, theres no added cost to the provider for increased text message usage from the users, etc..

yeah its a business and they are out to make money... but gouging the customers at every turn is not the way to do it.. i fully support any congressional investigation of this!! i want to save $5/mo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hansken_yo · Post by **hansken_yo** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 9:59 am

you could look at it as greed, but really what it probably boils down to (greed aside) is demand. Text messaging is very popular. So by raising the price of text messaging they can accrue enough income to offset other less popular services. Think of it like when you go to a fast food restaurant. You buy a hamburger for 99 cents and then pay $1.85 for a soft drink. Soft drink only costs them maybe 25 cents and yet they loose money on the burger. See the connection?

Post by **racer12306** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 10:03 am

It all boils down to this:

Want to text? Pay the cost

Don't want to pay for texting? don't text.

meh, thats about all. except i certainly would not support a congressional investigation. we have bigger shit to worry about than the cost of text messaging.

MoxHair · Post by **MoxHair** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:07 am

I heart Text Messages.

heyitsstock · Post by **heyitsstock** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:28 am

What Carriers Aren’t Eager to Tell You About Texting

Article Tools Sponsored By
By RANDALL STROSS
Published: December 26, 2008

TEXT messaging is a wonderful business to be in: about 2.5 trillion messages will have been sent from cellphones worldwide this year. The public assumes that the wireless carriers’ costs are far higher than they actually are, and profit margins are concealed by a heavy curtain.
Skip to next paragraph
Stuart Goldenberg

Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin and the chairman of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, wanted to look behind the curtain. He was curious about the doubling of prices for text messages charged by the major American carriers from 2005 to 2008, during a time when the industry consolidated from six major companies to four.

So, in September, Mr. Kohl sent a letter to Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, inviting them to answer some basic questions about their text messaging costs and pricing.

All four of the major carriers decided during the last three years to increase the pay-per-use price for messages to 20 cents from 10 cents. The decision could not have come from a dearth of business: the 2.5 trillion sent messages this year, the estimate of the Gartner Group, is up 32 percent from 2007. Gartner expects 3.3 trillion messages to be sent in 2009.

The written responses to Senator Kohl from AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile speak at length about pricing plans without getting around to the costs of conveying text messages. My attempts to speak with representatives of all three about their costs and pricing were unsuccessful. (Verizon Wireless would not speak with me, either, nor would it allow Mr. Kohl’s office to release publicly its written response.)

The carriers will have other opportunities to tell us more about their pricing decisions: 20 class-action lawsuits have been filed around the country against AT&T and the other carriers, alleging price-fixing for text messaging services. Timothy P. McKone, AT&T’s executive vice president for federal relations, told the senator that the suits had been filed “since your letter was made public” and said that he was “eager to clear up any misunderstanding.”

T-Mobile and AT&T contended in their responses to Mr. Kohl that the pay-per-use price of a message is relatively unimportant because most messaging is done as part of a package. With a $10 or $15 monthly plan for text messaging, customers of T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint can effectively bring the per-message price down to a penny, if they fully use their monthly allotment.

T-Mobile called Mr. Kohl’s attention to the fact that its “average revenue per text message, which takes into account the revenue for all text messages, has declined by more than 50 percent since 2005.”

This statement seems like good news for customers. But consider what is left out: In the past three years, the volume of text messaging in the United States has grown tenfold, according to CTIA — the Wireless Association, a trade group based in Washington. If T-Mobile enjoyed growth that was typical, its text messaging revenue grew fivefold, even with the steep drop in per-message revenue.

The lucrative nature of that revenue increase cannot be appreciated without doing something that T-Mobile chose not to do, which is to talk about whether its costs rose as the industry’s messaging volume grew tenfold. Mr. Kohl’s letter of inquiry noted that “text messaging files are very small, as the size of text messages are generally limited to 160 characters per message, and therefore cost carriers very little to transmit.”

A better description might be “cost carriers very, very, very little to transmit.”

A text message initially travels wirelessly from a handset to the closest base-station tower and is then transferred through wired links to the digital pipes of the telephone network, and then, near its destination, converted back into a wireless signal to traverse the final leg, from tower to handset. In the wired portion of its journey, a file of such infinitesimal size is inconsequential. Srinivasan Keshav, a professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, said: “Messages are small. Even though a trillion seems like a lot to carry, it isn’t.”

Perhaps the costs for the wireless portion at either end are high — spectrum is finite, after all, and carriers pay dearly for the rights to use it. But text messages are not just tiny; they are also free riders, tucked into what’s called a control channel, space reserved for operation of the wireless network.

That’s why a message is so limited in length: it must not exceed the length of the message used for internal communication between tower and handset to set up a call. The channel uses space whether or not a text message is inserted.

Professor Keshav said that once a carrier invests in the centralized storage equipment — storing a terabyte now costs only $100 and is dropping — and the staff to maintain it, its costs are basically covered. “Operating costs are relatively insensitive to volume,” he said. “It doesn’t cost the carrier much more to transmit a hundred million messages than a million.”

UNTIL Mr. Kohl began his inquiries, the public had no reason to think of the text-messaging business as anything but an ordinary one, whose operational costs rose in tandem with message volume. The carriers had no reason to correct such an impression.

Professor Keshav, whose academic research received financial support from one of the four major American carriers, discovered just how secretive the carriers are when it comes to this business. Two years ago, when he requested information from his sponsor about its network operations in the past so that his students could study a real-world text-messaging network, he was turned down. He said the company liaison told him, “Even our own researchers are not permitted to see that data.”

Once one understands that a text message travels wirelessly as a stowaway within a control channel, one sees the carriers’ pricing plans in an entirely new light. The most profitable plan for the carriers will be the one that collects the most revenue from the customer: unlimited messaging, for which AT&T and Sprint charge $20 a month and T-Mobile, $15.

Customers with unlimited plans, like diners bringing a healthy appetite to an all-you-can-eat cafeteria, might think they’re getting the best out of the arrangement. But the carriers, unlike the cafeteria owners, can provide unlimited quantities of “food” at virtually no cost to themselves — so long as it is served in bite-sized portions.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.

for kids who want to read the article

i miss paying like $70 a month with my sidekick

now im paying $110 for 900mins and unlimited everything with the iphone

theTeejmiester · Post by **theTeejmiester** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 2:33 pm

^^ thats part of the reason i no longer have a cell phone.got tired of all the bs charges and over priced phone bills.i was paying a hundred bucks a month for me and the wifes phones.now i only pay 17 bucks for my house phone.all the other money goes towards fun stuff rather than the fucking phone

Passt · Post by **Passt** » Tue Dec 30, 2008 3:35 pm

Sullivan, what plan are you on, with what carrier? I want it.

jT · Post by jT » Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:37 pm

a somewhat funny thing is this though---------- you can send text messages to most carriers from the web for free........ i specifically know that you can with verizon since i use it...

you can also put in a callback number type of thing.. i doubt that would allow the person you are sending a text to to text you back from their phone, but if you really wanted to screw the company just use the phone to go to the web site (if your phone can do that) and send a text that way... not as easy to do but it would be free!! haha

either way that is still text messaging --- and it's free..

as for congress involvement.. i was being somewhat sarcastic. .i agree that investigating text messaging is a waste.. but as for the bigger things we have to worry about... since when does congress get involved in anything important? (semi sarcastic but almost not!)

congress doesnt need to be involved in a bunch of jocks using steroids.. who the hell cares... but they got to investigate that... leave it to the sports people to do that shit... so this guy getting into text messaging cost isnt a total surprise...

Post by **Canada** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:08 pm

Passt wrote:Sullivan, what plan are you on, with what carrier? I want it.

Nate, I have the same features as Sullivan and I pay $35 a month. The only thing he forgot to mention is that we pay taxes on top of that, as well as system access fees with some carriers.

My bill, all said and done with the above features comes to about $48 CDN/month.

Telus Mobility here in Ontario, Canada.

krc21 · Post by **krc21** » Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:14 pm

9.99 a month unlimited everything. Verizon Employee Plan

text internet calls you name it its unlimited..