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Can you believe this? It almost cost $0 to process a text... More at the bottom with video link about the Senate Judiciary Committee Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights from C-span
"Cha-ching! Telcos overcharge for text messages. We all know that, right? Unless you specifically subscribe to a text message plan in the United States, the carriers will charge you an exorbitant rate per message. For example, Verizon Wireless and AT&T will both charge $0.20 per text message if you don’t buy a texting plan from them. Even at a more conservative pricing of five cents per message, that means the carriers are charging around $383,000 per gigabyte.
By comparison, the total cost for the Mars Global Surveyor to send a gigabyte back to Earth, is only $284,000. This includes the $200 million cost of launching the satellite, and nine years of operational costs incurred by its NASA crew. That’s right — it costs US tax payers $99,000 less to send a gigabyte of data from Mars than it does for cellphone users to send a gigabyte worth of 160 character text messages.
Rick Falkvinge’s math shows that it would take 7.67 million text messages to make up a gigabyte. That may sound like a lot, but consider that in the US alone we have over 300 million cellphones in use as of this past June. Worldwide, we have over six billion mobile phones in operation. That’s a lot of potential text messages. After doing some rough calculations about what it actually costs telcos to transfer data, Falkvinge comes up with a shocking 15,000,000,000% markup on text messages. That’s a tough pill to swallow even at a tiny fraction of the current markup.
It’s no wonder that Apple wanted to get around this obnoxious gouging for its customers by implementing iMessage on its devices. While the stability hasn’t been great, Tim Cook announced back at the iPad Mini event that over 300 billion messages have been sent using iMessage — completely disregarding the costly text message system of the carriers. Before Apple took on the telcos, RIM’s BlackBerry phones were praised heavily for BBM’s ability to circumvent the need for pricey text messaging. Even though RIM’s brand has been significantly devalued, BBM is still widely used in some markets. It’s obvious why it was so successful when you see the money that can be saved by bypassing text messages.
The advent of unlimited talk and text plans have made the high-end market of smartphones and feature phones somewhat easier to accept, but pay-as-you-go plans at the bottom of the market are still shockingly overpriced. Whenever telcos like AT&T complain about overtaxed networks, and decide to implement restrictions on features like FaceTime for paying customers with data plans, let’s just remember how much they gouge us. Twenty cents for 140 bytes of text is absolutely ridiculous, and they know it"
"Texting your friend "Hey, what's up, Joe?" costs a wireless carrier roughly 1/1,000 of a penny"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NOTICE OF SUBCOMMITTEE HEARING
The Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights will hold a hearing entitled "Cell Phone Text Messaging Rate Increases and the State of Competition in the Wireless Market" on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 2:30 p.m. in Room 226 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building.
“Cell Phone Text Messaging Rate Increases and the State of Competition in the Wireless Market”
Go 16 minutes in to start to see the Video... Sorry it's not on YouTube but this will take you right to the C-Span Web Cast
http://www.senate.gov/isvp/?comm=judiciary&type=live&filename=judiciary061609&st=xxx
Here is the link to the C-Span website with link to the web cast.... http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=e655f9e2809e5476862f735da14b66b2
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So you would rather pay for a data plan to send those iMessages? iMessages only works between other iPhones. BBM until recently only works on BlackBerry phones.
I'm most definitely NOT a VZW employee. If a post answered your question, please mark it as the answer.
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A text is a text it's all the same Whether it's Verizon, AT&T...etc.. I'm guessing from your reply you didn't watch the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights video... BTW..I haven't been with Verizon for over 8 years now and it was the best thing I did... 3 years prior to leaving I never had a contact... I was sick and tired of watching my minutes and counting how many texts were sent and revised... right now I have unlimited calls, text and data for $45 a month with no contact
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Big deal. That Iced Tea that the local restaurant charges me $2.00 for certainly only cost them a few cents to make. But I'm not spamming that all over the place.
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"spamming that all over the place"?.. You know what spamming means?.. I'm guessing not with that post... here let me help you...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_%28electronic%29
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There is no proof that PT Barnum ever said, "There's a sucker born every minute." but I still like to use that quote...
Knowledge is power...
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This shows you how to save money
http://pocketnow.com/2013/05/21/carrier-text-messaging-bad-idea
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This part of the article made me both laugh and shake my head.
Here it is the very wireless carrier(s) that helped sponsor his research refused to give him pertinent info that he needed to complete his research.
"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.”
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Watching these Greedy CEO's squirm and being shown how they are ripping people off made my day