Just saw on BBC site that 26 billion texts were sent in 2004! What gets me is how mobile phone companies can justify charging 12p per text when a single sms message must only take a fraction of the time a normal phone call, and hence seems massively over charging for the service. Really pees me off that kind of rip off.
people aren't forced to pay no, but texting has become a way of life especially amongst kids (and chatty girlfriends!) and all providers seem to charge the same...is there some price fixing going on? seems like it...there doesn't seem to be much competition between providers. realistically, text message should be costing a penny each.
The service providers have to recoup their infrastructure investment in existing technology and are then having to invest in 3G infrastructure and recovery of license outlay.
They are charging what the market will bear, and clearly it will bear current price levels for SMS. Loyalty is another factor for them, but again if they thought that SMS pricing made a significant difference, they would compete on it.
I nearly bought a 3G card for the notebook. The price levels, although still high, were livable with as a business expense. Then I discovered that during international roaming, they charge over £5 a megabyte. I didn't proceed with it.
As an example of the discrepancy, the phone companies provide GPRS data=20 on mobiles at around =A31 per megabyte. An SMS message is 160 characters,= =20 which with the header info is say 200 bytes.
If they want to charge =A31 per megabyte, 200 bytes should be charged at=20
0.02p.
Or if they want to charge 10p for 200 bytes, a megabyte should be=20 charged at =A3524.29.
Except that for a text message you are paying for a message, an entity, not a volume of data, so a comparison is not very meaningful based on data rate. The data for a voice phone call wouldn't correlate to either - they are charging for the perceived value of what you get, not the amount of data it takes to achieve it.
True. I can't see the point in texting at all - mind you, I can hardly see the screen ... since it's only grandchildren who send them I assume that they don't need a reply so I don't bother. If it's important they ring. From their parents' land line.
Texting is one of the sillier things in life. I'm not going to get upset by something as silly as that.
Andy Burns wrote in news:41f51226$0$45564$ snipped-for-privacy@ptn-nntp-reader04.plus.net:
I used to text when travelling by train around London. I would write the message and send it - and when a my phone connected to a transmitter it went. Voice calls would have been impossible on some of the routes. They also avoid the need to disturb everyone else in the vicinity with one's voice.
I remember many years ago, Orange used to charge £2 a month to be able to send messages, for as many as you wanted to. These were the days when only Orange and Vodafone customers could send messages, and even then only to someone else on the same network.
Then it became popular, they saw how much money could be made from messaging and decided to drop the monthly rental charge for sending messages and charge per-message instead.
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