Not because it’s often silly to use a phone to send a message, the typing of which takes longer than a phone call to convey same verbally … or because old people like me find it difficult to coordinate their thumbs …
We should stop texting because we are tired of being bent over a barrel. Our backs are sore, and we are dizzy from all the blood that has rushed to our heads.
Currently, the Senate is investigating potential price fixing among wireless carriers, companies that have raised per-message text rates 100% (from an average $0.10 to $0.20) and also have increased monthly unlimited-text charges by significant amounts over the last three years.
Turns out (with what little transparency companies offer on texting technology) it is damn-near FREE for wireless carriers to transmit the multi-trillion text messages sent over the same period. Powered cell phones are constantly pinging back and forth with cell towers as they move on our persons. Every ping, besides providing our locations and enabling service, has open space to transmit additional information. Actually, each ping has enough space to carry the byte load of 160 text characters.
160 characters … hmmmmm … sound familiar?
Companies limit text messages to 160 characters because that is what will fit (at no additional charge to them) as part of a transmission that is happening anyway. There, of course, IS the aforementioned increased cost to the consumer, either on a per-message basis or as part of a monthly package charge.
This model is a stroke of genius from the carriers. They are essentially making money for nothing, and who doesn’t want to do that?
The class-action suits can work themselves out; in the meantime, I’m going to give my thumbs and my wallet a rest.
Of course, considering the frightfully low success rates of most of my resolutions, this particular rage against the machine might not amount to much.
Sigh.
I don’t think it’s fair to say “One message costs essentially nothing, so it should be essentially free”. While you’re right, a text message costs essentially nothing, the carriers have to keep all their machines running, which surely costs something – independently of the actual number of messages sent.
The question is how to distribute these constant costs onto the customer. A fair way would maybe to charge them 1) for simply switching on their mobile phone (the fewer customers are connected to the network, the less router stations are needed), and 2) for sending a message (the less messages are sent, the less CPU power is needed for routing messages around).
It’s the same with public transit: It doesn’t make a difference if I travel with that bus or not, but if a lot more people use that bus, the transit company needs another one.
On the other hand, if people rarely send text messages and don’t pay attention to the prices when signing a contract with a carrier, the telcos can charge arbitraryly high prices.
This is currently a problem in the European Union: No one looks at the mobile phone prices (text and voice) he has to pay when traveling abroad and during vacation, people have to pay astronomically high prices when they want to call their friends at home.
The EU thinks the prices are unjustifiably high (and also wants to accelerate the process of the EU commission becoming one big nation) and ordered the carriers to lower their prices of using mobiles phones in foreign countries within the EU.
And I agree with the EU commission.
By the way: I’m in my twenties, I consider myself young, and I hatedislike mobile phones and especially writing text messages.
Posted by BerlinCitizen | January 2, 2009, 8:06 am