Senator opens inquiry into rising text messaging rates
by Donald Melanson 
posted Sep 10th 2008 at 12:31PM
The increasingly high cost of text messaging has already caused a bit of a stir in Canada, and it looks like Democratic Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin is concerned with the situation in the US as well, with him now opening an inquiry to attempt to get the carriers to explain themselves. Apparently, Kohl is a bit puzzled as to why some customers are now paying 20 cents per message when they paid just 10 cents in 2005, a period that Kohl notes just happens to overlap with some consolidation in the wireless industry, when the number of national carriers shrunk from six to four. Those carriers, as you might expect, aren't saying much just yet, with Sprint only going as far as to say that it looks forward to "responding to the Senator's inquiry about the text messaging options we offer our customers and we will fully cooperate with his request," and the rest saying even less.
Filed under: Messaging
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Hush @ Sep 10th 2008 12:49PM
Yeah Herb, you tell em'!
Matt @ Sep 10th 2008 12:54PM
Herb Kohl needs to stop wasting his time and our money and actually do something useful for our state.
Omagus @ Sep 10th 2008 3:35PM
Or at least put out a quality basketball team.
MadMike @ Sep 10th 2008 12:58PM
It's not going to accomplish anything. One senator? The entire telecommunications subcommittee and the FCC can't make a dent - what's one senator going to do?
Money Grubbing Nickle and Dimeing douchebag corporations. Anonymous should stop fighting Scientology, hack their bank accounts and bankrupt them and then go after the RIAA, MPAA, Cell Companies & Cable Companies. Get us faster, cheaper and limit free internet, unlimited cellphones for less money and bankrupt the RIAA & MPAA and donate all the money to charity minus a few hundred million that they give to me as a "consultation fee."
Boris @ Sep 10th 2008 4:47PM
How about the fact that incoming SMS was free on AT&T in 2003 while 5 cents with everyone else and rate plans went from $40 for 600 or more minutes to $40 for 450 minutes shortly after Cingular acquired AT&T?
Ducky_Fresh @ Sep 10th 2008 1:42PM
To make more money. Isn't this a capitalist society? Plus people are texting more than talking, so the companies have to recoup those lost revenues somewhere.
Mike B. @ Sep 10th 2008 2:46PM
what lost revenues? they're still making the money off of the voice plans... probably just not as much on overages cause people are less likely to go over the voice minutes... but it's not like they're losing everything from the voice area... unless it's costing more to supply the texting service they shouldn't be charging more on the texts...
iofthestorm @ Sep 10th 2008 6:47PM
Bullshit, it probably costs them less than one cent to send text messages. This is just more corporate greed at its best.
Jamar @ Sep 11th 2008 7:46AM
That's how much I pay for outgoing text when roaming with a foreign SIM on AT&T. And I STILL get free incoming. So AT&T isn't so much recouping lost profit as making an absolute killing.
babakhaan @ Sep 11th 2008 1:17AM
freakin idiots are killing ... the whole world has free sms to any other country except the US
pretty lame
Freitag @ Sep 11th 2008 3:57PM
They charge it because people will pay it.
The fee will keep increasing until demand peaks.
This process is called "determining the price point"
It is standard capitalistic business practice and happens in every market.
They way to fight it is to stop using the service. This forces demand to drop and the producer to reduce the price.
If you keep using it, you are part of the reason it continues to go up.
Soren @ Sep 12th 2008 6:28AM
so now is not a good time to tell that here in Denmark I pay what is roughly 2 cents per sms?
Soren @ Sep 12th 2008 6:31AM
What???!!! you pay for incoming SMS in the U.S.? wow...why do you put up with it?