The obvious truth about text messaging: you're getting ripped off

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decab @ Dec 28th 2008 10:45PM

it is kinda crazy. i know att's product very well. and when you break it down... its mind boggling. so lets use their formula. the charge one penny per kb. they charge .20 cent per text message. a single text message is 160 characters... which breaks down to 160 bytes... sooo with 1024 bytes in a kb. a text really cost 0.0009765625 of a penny...so, technically, for a penny you SHOULD be able to send 1,048,576 text messages... so unless your sending 2,097,152,000 text messages a month with the unlimited plan like that one iphone girl... youre kinda just sorta maybe getting the company to stick it to ya.... hard. so should these rates be decreased? absolutely. will anyone do anything about it? ... most likely not. this also bring up another question... isnt this considered price fixing?

and this is only talking about text messages... think about these companies internet price fixing... (or inflating, with those nice new iptv services)

Highly Ranked

greenlight @ Dec 29th 2008 12:19AM

Except data and text messaging isn't the same thing at all. SMS uses the control channel which is far more restricted than the main data/voice channels, plus all SMS go into a central storage database (consider how huge this computer has to be to handle the billions of text messages) to be forwarded to the recipient (and stored for days if his phone is off or on, etc). Add to this inter-operator fees when you send a message from AT&T to Verizon and verizon wants a cut of what AT&T charge you, and you get costs that far exceed the raw data cost.

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Tito @ Dec 29th 2008 5:27AM

Where the heck are your figures coming from?

1 cent per kb = 1024 bytes.

Ok.

1 SMS = at most 160 characters = 160 bytes.

Ok.

That means you could fit just under 6 1/2 text messages for a penny (6.4 if you pop it into the calculator, to be exact) not that ridiculously inflated and unrealistic calculation!

But, again, that's assuming data rates and not taking other factors into consideration.

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