"Text Rip-Off? Pricey Messages 'Cost Virtually Nothing' to Carriers"
FOXNews (December 30, 2008)
" In the past few years, people seem to have forgone the conventional phone conversation in favor of punching in short text messages on tiny keypads, all while mobile phone carriers have cashed in lucratively.
Text Messages at 20 Cents a Pop: Prodigious Profit
"In 2008, 2.5 trillion messages were sent from cell phones worldwide, up 32 percent from the year before, according to...."
The price of each text message has gone up, too, from 10 to 20 cents per message.
Considering that the text messages are tiny files that can - and do - travel in control channels, or in space reserved for operation of a wireless network.
The channel takes up space, whether there's a text message in it or not.
Not all carriers charge that much: and one of the ones that does is "eager to clear up any misunderstanding." That, I believe.
I don't text message at all. I recognize that some people do for business reasons. When it comes to responding to the doubling of charges for what some adults consider as a necessary business expense it will be interesting to see how they respond.
ReplyDeleteBut I also notice that many of those who seem obsessed with texting are teens, who lack an income. In previous times non necessary texting would have been equivalent to teens, who blab on the phone for hours on end to school mates they just saw at school a few hours before.
I assume it will be up to their parents to make decisions about how to respond to this doubling in cost. For parents, of course, the solution might turn out to be to stop paying for text messaging for their kids at all. After all, how will parents justify this frivolous expense given the fact that their kids are also spending hours blabbing on cell phones with classmates they see everyday?
timethief,
ReplyDeleteGood observations all around, although in Minnesota, at least, quite a number of teenagers have part-time jobs.
I suspect that the 'business texters' selected packages with reasonable costs: and that the doubling-cost packages are used by people who can't - or won't - pay attention to details.
Which brings up an interesting question: How far should government go, protecting people who can't - or don't - make sensible financial decisions?
Like timethief, I don't text message at all either. In response to your comment here, many of the teens I know who text are quite young, some even preteens, and none of them have jobs. It even surprised me that the stereotype of teenagers texting each other from across the room has some truth to it: in my church's youth group, where many of these teens I mentioned are, they really will text message each other from across the room multiple times before they are told to put away their phones to pay attention. Spending a dollar to say 5 sentences to someone across a room is certainly not worth the money, in my opinion.
ReplyDelete