Press Now Recognizing That Text Messaging Is Spendy in the U.S.
While perusing CNN.com recently, I saw a list of “America’s Biggest Rip-Offs“. Number one on the list is text messaging (or SMS for those outside the U.S.).
The markup collected by mobile carriers such as Verizon and AT&T, according to CNN, is 6500%. While that sounds like a huge number, it’s true. Here in the United States, we pay around 20 cents per message, coming and going!
Additionally, since SMS takes virtually no overhead to service and deliver, this number is pure profit to our mobile carriers. This is why so many of us opt for text messaging bundles, whereby we pay $10 for 1000 message and so forth.
Apparently, the U.S. mobile carriers are trying to guarenteed a monthly revenue stream by making texts seem inexpensive by bundling them into packages.
I have been saying for years that SMS is way too expensive in the U.S. and it’s nice to see the mainstream media picking up the theme also. My hope is that with enough people complaining about it, change may happen.
(Photo credit: Flickr User Wayan Vota)
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 10:30 am and is filed under grandcentral, mobile, tech news/notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
