Would you pay $66 for 1 megabyte of data? You already are.
Are you a fan of texting? I certainly am. There have been months when I blew through my texting plan, and got a nasty bill in the mail. I was thinking about this today and It’s amazing how badly we are being ripped off by the phone companies for what amounts to just standard data.
Did you know that a full text message, including text and headers is only about 160 bytes? That’s right. BYTES, not kilobytes, not megabytes. Bytes. And even if you have a texting plan for lets say 1000 messages for $10.00 a month, you’re still paying 1 cent per text. 1 cent for 160 bytes. In that sense, that doesn’t sound like much, I know. It’s hard to get angry over 1 cent. But in this time of high speed mobile internet, and $30 unlimited 3g data plans, charging 1 cent for 160 bytes, is the internet equivalent of throwing you on a bed of hot coals and raping you.
Let me explain.
You’re average MP3 from iTunes or Zune, or wherever you get your music, is somewhere around 4 megabytes. Thats 4,194,304 bytes.
So, if you were charged the same amount of money per byte to download your music, guess how much that single mp3 would cost?
$262.14. OVER TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS. For a single song, downloaded once.
Hell, if you were charged that data rate, guess how much it would cost you JUST to load the homepage of this site?
$32.00. Just to go to ONE web site, ONE TIME.
Ridiculous isnt it? And that is pricing based on having a texting plan. Now granted, my math is off if you’re paying 10 cents per text, or if you have an unlimited texting plan. Also, you wouldn’t want to, nor be able to, transfer that much data over SMS, but the fact is, that since SMS messages are just standard data, there is absolutely no reason that Cellphone companies should charge you so much for so little data, especially in addition to an unlimited data plan.
The funny thing is, that people who would complain about tiered internet access, with 5GB per month caps, have no problem forking over the extra $10 per month for thier text plans.
This needs to stop, and it needs to stop now. I would like to suggest sending a snail mail ( so that they actually read it ) letter to your mobile carrier, letting them know that you are fed up with the high prices for SMS data, and that a change needs to be made. I’ll be sending mine to T-Mobile today.
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July 31st, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Wow, never thought of it like this. Your claims seem reasonable but I don’t think a lot of people realize how little a text message is. This is a scam but I doubt a single letter would suffice, maybe a petition…
July 31st, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Thanks for the comment SAI.
I’ve found nothing gets through to the corporate world better than a crap-load of envelopes showing up in the mail room.
There’s something about the fact that someone wrote, printed out, sealed, placed a 42 cent stamp, and went to the post office to mail a letter, that somehow gives it far more impact than a simple email or online petition.
If this angers you as much as it does me, please do write your mobile provider. Thanks for reading!
–Justin
July 31st, 2008 at 9:51 pm
It doesn’t cost the phone company anything to send txt. In fact many pay for incoming txt too, even for notices they receive from the phone company.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:18 am
As Vedetta points out, some companies are charging for incoming SMS messages (from carriers themselves!) (Bell plans on introducing this here in Canada). Worse yet, Rogers (the other Canadian carrier) had a representative recently call a friend of mine, just to check up on his new cellphone service… asked to put him on hold… oh, but “it’s a courtesy call, so you are being charged airtime minutes”.
Some of the practices are really questionable.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:31 am
Try using a service like this one, they are great, and cheap.
http://www.econfirm.com.au/
August 1st, 2008 at 4:23 am
I don’t want to disappoint you, but it’s 140 bytes, not 160
August 1st, 2008 at 7:23 am
Hey Dmitri
The text itself is 140bytes but it does include a header which is at least a few bytes. So i figured I’d round it to around 160.
Thanks though!
–Justin
August 1st, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Justin: For the record, you said that the 160 includes the headers
I was furious when I heard about what Bell wants to do about incoming messages. They claim that it’s because their networks are having trouble dealing with all the texts people are sending. ….Umm…excuse me?
1. Bullshit.
2. Assuming no BS: If your network can’t handle the few bytes occupied by a text message, then perhaps you should consider taking a small fraction of the gross monthly charges (and over charges, if your on Rogers), and get some techs who won’t wire up the country with under cooked spaghetti.
3. Regarding Canada: Why not tap a few of the kilometers of dark fibre lying around?
4. If I pay for 2500 texts per month, it is simply NOT exceptable to have my phone company charge me when they text me… asking me to buy something. It would be like the candy store clerk taking one of my life savers I just bought, while he explains to me why I should buy the Twix bar.
August 4th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
how much is one minute of a phone call?
if i were to guess, that’d probably be as much data as all the texts for the month right?
Because i’m horrible at estimations (usually off by a mile), lets say the the same amount of data being sent for 2 minutes of a phone call is the same for the amount of texting data for a whole month. (on average)
soo
the phone company would be charging you $10 a month for 2 minutes a phone call
do i smell a ripoff?
August 5th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Here’s a suggestion. Instead of paying 42 cents to mail them your complaint, wait for them to send you some sort of ad or bill with a return envelope postage paid. Include your complaint letters in this. Otherwise, they’re sapping more of your money to try to lodge a valid complaint. Granted, it doesn’t go to them, but trust me, they realize that if you pay for it yourself you did, and if you do it in their envelope, they just paid for that complaint, and if enough of them come in, it might make them think about it. That’s 4 text messages they have to pay for (by their measurement anyways) to get a complaint about how they’re totally ripping off their customers. We should also find a way to send these complaints POD (postage on delivery) to them so they can see what it’s like to be charged for each individual packet transmission like they do us. If we can figure out how to do that, we should send millions of 2 line messages like “Hi AT&T whats up??” and “Sending texts is fun!” and “paying for each individual message that costs you nothing is what I always wanted to do, so I bet you guys LOVE me sending these for 42 cents each! thank me later!! CUL8R BITNX
<3 XO”
August 5th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Great idea Locke! I love it. Btw, made that change for you. Tested the site under ubuntu, looks fine. Dunno about your setup. Anyway thanks for reading!
August 5th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Thanks Justin,
the change looks great from here.
Also, the problems I was seeing with the text no longer exist (showing strange black question marks instead of ’s and such) but I still see the comment fields wrong. It looks like:
Leave a reply
___________
Name (required
[ (email addy) ]
Mail (will not be published)(required)
[ (URL) ]
Website
[ body of text ]
[ ]
[ ]
[ ]
[ ]
[ ]
[ ]
etc
August 5th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
damn, that looked nothing like I intended it to
the system got rid of all spaces, which I was using to make the ascii picture, so now it looks totally stupid
anyways, the name label is a line below the name/email entry
the mail label is a line below the email box (and on the left)
and the website label is the same, but it is directly above the text entry box, making it look like it is just a label for comment/body/whatever, so it looks like you just have an email entry, which looks like you have to enter it twice, since both are t he same size and both are equally spaced to the tright of the Mail line. The website label is directly above the body, in fact i’ll enclose a screenshot so you can see. This is on firefox 3 on Ubuntu 8.04 Linux (the latest version) in which the vast majority of websites work perfectly, since it suppots web standards pretty much perfectly, unlike internet explorer, which doesn’t support crap.
Anyways, good luck
Locke
Heres the link for the image:
http://c.imagehost.org/0180/commentform.png
August 5th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
That is actually one nice advantage of running Linux, all you have to do is push the print screen key, which normally does nothing in dos or windows since the 80s, and it automatically pulls up a program that saves a screenshot of your screen at the time into whatever image format you want, with just the one press and OK. I don’t know what your OS allegiances are, but you should definitely check out Linux if you haven’t already.
August 5th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Hey Locke,
I run OS X Leopard and Ubuntu Hardy. Both of which I love. On my laptop under Linux the site renders correctly, but I’ll speak to the designer of the theme, and hopefully see if I can get the problems fixed.
Thanks again!
–Justin
August 6th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
[...] READ MORE [...]
August 6th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Actually, texts are sent through GSM/UMTS and NOT through the data route of GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA. So you would have to equate the cost of a text with the cost of a voice minute. This is how texts are sent so quickly. If they were to be sent through data, it would take much longer to connect and disconnect everytime draining your battery. (This is also how your clock stays up-to-date) However if you are using Sprint/Verizon or any CDMA carrier, it does go through your data route (much less reliable) and is how MetroPCS can offer everything unlimited for $40 Cheap service= cheap prices. Your right though! I calculate 2 tenths of a penny per message, and they would still make a killing!
August 6th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
@Justin
I have the problem with the theme too.
I run Ubuntu 8.04 with Firefox 3.
Just letting you know.
August 6th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
Hey guys, I spoke to the designer of the theme. It looks like its a bug in the rendering engine for Firefox 3 on Linux. I’m going to wait it out till the next major version of Firefox on Linux simply because I don’t want to fix it only to have it break on the next update. Sorry for the inconvenience guys!
August 7th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
try living in Canada…
August 7th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
[...] http://justinflood.com/?p=300 [...]
August 9th, 2008 at 4:32 am
Well, they can only pull it off for a couple of years, I guess. When internet on mobile devices becomes ubiquitous, people will find a free workaround. Something like a chat client for cell phones. That’s when SMS becomes free.
August 10th, 2008 at 12:56 am
I don’t think your comparison to downloading an mp3 is very well thought out, there’s a lot more work involved in producing a 3-4 minute song (usually) than there is in writing a text message.
Also, if you feel you’re being ripped off by your phone company a really good way to show that you don’t like their product is to not use / pay for it. It’s not an essential service and there are alternative methods of communication available to the human species.
August 11th, 2008 at 9:24 am
The sms scam has annoyed me for several years now, this is the first time I’ve seen anyone write about it. I live in Australia and pay 20 cents per sms. Looking at the details of the sms stored on my phone it shows them to be 0.5 kB each.
In comparison to my broadband connection I pay approx 0.000072 cents to download 0.5 kB - this means an sms costs 275000 times as much as sending the same amount of data via my adsl!
Another way to look at it would be: if my isp charged me the same rate as my phone carrier does for sms, my internet access would cost me $22,000,000 per month!!
August 11th, 2008 at 10:15 am
unlockedcellphone.blogspot.com
I think the best thing to do for now is have a unlimited data plan. I doubt that carriers are going to simply roll over. But as the technology improves ie wifi phones the sms / e-mail is going to be included in your plan. also right now you can by pass ur carrier and use your home or work wireless networks to send e-mail check the net etc…
August 11th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Well if you use wi-fi (or 3g, edge, etc) you could always send text messages for free. and I think that yahoo/aim supports sending to cell phones. there are ways around text messages.
—————-
source:
http://www.onlinetextmessage.com/
http://www.text4free.net/
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=free+online+sms&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
August 12th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I totally agree with the author however, that’s how cell phone companies make money… plain and simple, there isn’t a *single* carrier that wants to miss out on this goldmine, aside from charging you for 2 minutes if u hung up at 1:01 minutes, they love raping us, in a sense literally raping our money. There’s *nothing* we can do about it…. unless we start our own cell phone carrier, set up cell towers and manage the prices ourselves…. when will that day come?
August 26th, 2008 at 3:06 am
Actually the print screen function in windows will copy a pic of your desktop to the clipboard (in windows), enabling you to paste into paint or whatever you like.
Knowledge is Power.
August 30th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
It’s true that that is a lot of money, but you have to consider the fact that these are competitive prices, if they charged what it really costed them then this service would be INCREDIBLY cheap.
Another thing to take into account is that there is a cost to the cell phone company of establishing the link between the phone and the tower prior to sending the text (notifying the tower of pending message) and the confirmation of the text from the tower back to the phone.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
[...] Singura smecherie e ca 1MB de SMS-uri inseamna 6554 de mesaje. Si eu nu cred ca am trimis atatea in viata mea de cand folosesc telefonul mobil. Interesant, nu? Adaptat pentru noi, de la Justin. [...]
October 31st, 2008 at 6:01 am
Sorry to be so blunt about it, but if you don’t like it, don’t text message…all carriers will block the service for you completely if you ask them to, the market price is set at what people are willing to pay, if you don’t pay then the price might come down, it’s the only way your going to have any effect.
Look at AT&T’s push to talk feature…was $10 a month for unlimited…no one used it, it’s now $5 a month for unlimited…if people continue to NOT use it, watch pretty soon it will be free.
October 31st, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Well Well Well fellas…I hope a revolution will soon start..You have gotta realize that Canadian Corporation dosent need to care about consumres..The competition is virtually nill..zero..nada..Go on into the asian countries and look at their phone and data plans..
eg: Malaysia:
Prepaid:
Company-Digi
SMS-Free ( Incoming and Outgoing)
Calls: Incoming-Free
Calls Outgoing-.03 cents per minute(1 cents Ringgit Malaysia)
Call Display-Free
Data rate: 1 cent per 5 Mega Bytes
Voice mail-(same cost as outgoing call-charged as long it is used)
Average cost of having a prepaid cellphone per month- 5 to 10 USD
And with that 10 bucks, i go head over heels with my cellphone..using it 24/7
Post paid charges you around 15-18 USD per Month…and it includes every god damn thing there is..no ta, no 911 fess..nothing..pay 18 bucks a month and nothin more..
Now I am in canada..
Average cost for a prepaid phone-30 bucks per month. texting-15 cents per sms, no data plan-too expensive..
All this is simply bcoz the govt has restricted all foreign markets in canada..so service providers have no competition. If they want to charge more, what can we do??.other than pay what they ask..if there was free trade, the competition will be high, especially with money and companies from china, and india flowing in.. Canadian companies would have to drastically lower their charges simply to stay alive in the race…So quit sitting in your houses and tell your polititians that you care..Call your regional MP, or whatever..Unite people Unite..
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:23 am
[...] about text message costs (actually NYTimes is a bit slow on the uptake, some dude figured this out months ago) but people will continue to text like their lives depend on itWindows 7 will be praised for being [...]