Check out the prices for a text message plan on AT&T, the exclusive carrier of the iPhone 3G in the United States. AT&T wants twenty cents ($0.20) per text message if you don’t sign up for a plan. A text message is nothing more than 160 bytes of data. The max is 160 characters, and one character equals one byte of data. Great.
Again, AT&T is charging you twenty cents for 160 bytes of data. To illustrate how absurd that is, consider the following.
If 160 bytes of data costs twenty cents then 1MB (1,048,576 bytes) of data would cost 131,072 cents, or $1,310.72.
In other words, if AT&T charged data downloads at the rate they charge text messages downloading 1MB of data would cost you $1,310.72.
That math assumes you max out each text message you send. AT&T will charge you twenty cents whether you use all 160 characters, or simply write “K“ to your friend. Multiply $1,310.72 by 160 if you really want to freak out. That works out to $209,715 per megabyte. Chump change.
May I suggest everyone complain to AT&T about this? It seems so dishonest, twenty cents for 160 bytes of data.
Other fun: at $5 for 200 text messages you’re paying 2.5 cents per text message. At $15 for 1,500 text messages you’re paying 1 cent per text. All that makes $20 for unlimited texts—when are you ever going to send more than 1,500 text messages in a month?—“seem” like a deal. It’s not.
Bottom line is, AT&T is absolutely screwing each and every one of you with these text messages prices. I don’t want to say they should be free, but there’s no way they should cost what AT&T charges.
It’s not how much data ya transfer, it’s how ya use it.
Is there a *good* way to organize such a massive group complaint (please don’t say “Twitter”)? Should we gather at AT&T headquarters with pitchforks and torches? I’d be down for that.
Hahahahaha Pitchforks and torches it is!!! Same goes for verizon!
As ludicrous as there pricing is it is completely legal.
The correct way to deal with this is to stop paying for something that is overpriced. Athletes are not to blame for outrageous player salaries, people who pay for the overpriced tickets are. Likewise, the people who pay $.20 a text message are responsible for letting the phone companies get away with their insane pricing. Stop doing business with companies who over price their products and see how fast they lower their prices.
1) Stop texting me “K”! Could very well be the best DiggNation moment. Ever.
2) I’m not disagreeing with you, but your math is a little off. 160 bytes is the data YOU are sending, but there’s other data that has to go with it. Timestamp, destination, etc. So maybe a text message is 200 bytes. Maybe a little more. But the basic premise you present is still pretty true: if you send messages without a text plan, AT&T will hose you. If you go over your limit, they will hose you. If you pay a bunch and don’t use what you pay for, they already ARE hosing you. Either way, you get hosed.
Your assumption is that people are rational. No one in their right mind would pay that much but guess what, we do. it is perceived value. Same reason we pay $3 for coffee at Starbucks. Also the same reason, if we could drive across town to save $6 on a $20 pair of earphones we would. If you could also drive across town to save $6 on a $500 suit we wouldn’t. It is all relative and ATT is merely playing on our irrationality. My example comes from a great book, Predictably Irrational.
BTW I’m an ATT/icrack customer and I think it is crazy but you know what…I’m still going to send a text message today.
You’d be surprised how many teenage girls send more than 1500 text messages a month
You’d be surprised how many teenage girls send 1500 text messages in a week or even a day.
A girl our newspaper did a story on sent/received almost 15,000 text messages in a month. That averaged out to about a text message every 2 minutes (factoring in 8 hours of sleep, in which we assumed she wasn’t texting). Text message bill for the month without a plan… $3000.
3 words: Fair Market Price.
Fair market price equals whatever people are willing to pay.
And in this case, almost 100% profit for AT&T / VZ / others.
the biggest scam of all is it essentially costs them 0. text message are just sent as part of your phone talking to the network. as in, when you phone says to the tower ‘i’m over here’ your pending texts get sent with that handshake
biggest. scam. ever.
I remember reading something similar to this article on another tech blog, it costs more to send a data per MB on a cellular network, than it does to send data to the moon (based on NASA predictions). I guess they have to pay for the Champagne at the stock holders meetings somehow.
I’ve been feeling screwed over by AT&T (AKA The Evil Empire) for years. However, what other carrier can you go to that doesn’t do the same thing? Unfortunately, when you choose to have a cell phone, you should know you’re gonna pretty much take it like an inmate.
I’ve been feeling screwed over by AT&T (AKA The Evil Empire) for years. However, what other carrier can you go to that doesn’t do the same thing? Unfortunately, when you choose to have a cell phone, you should know you’re gonna pretty much take it like an inmate.
In some other countries, cell phone service, especially text messages, cost a lot more. I think this kind of pricing is simply a reflection of the lack of competition in the US market–you don’t have more than just a few companies to choose from in a given city, and sometimes, there’s only one or two that have decent signal coverage. Because of the lack of competition, they can charge such an exorbitant amount.
Sorry, I meant “cost a lot less.”
does the fact that sms data is done in 7-bit sequences matter when it comes to cost? er was it 7-byte? i guess i just assumed that difference was why sms was so expensive…no worries tho – me got a SERO plan with sprint – unlim txts (WOO WOO) for NOTHING!!!
In the UK it’s about the same price, but we don’t pay for messages received – that’s the killer! You guys end up paying double, because after all, who ever sends a text message and doesn’t expect one back?
I wonder if they are accurate on that sheet, or if they will have the same problem Verizon had with the .20 cents per text on the family plan, that means a buck would get you 500 texts…
The math is wrong. SMS are actually 140 bytes of binary data as payload. In the US, it’s using an 7-bit ASCII characters, so you can send 140 * 8 / 7 = 160 characters.
so i was sort of close eh?
Is it possible to disable incoming SMS ?
I never send any SMS, and don’t want to receive any.
No, I wish I could turn it off and I’ve asked, but that’s not possible for an individual plan phone or for the primary phone on a family plan. You can turn it off for other phones in the family plan though.
http://mymessages.wireless.att.com/
Dude, quit your whining! If you don’t want it, don’t get the new 3G iPhone!
After all, AT&T is subsidizing the phones by $200 (or more), so they are already losing money from the very beginning.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. That’s how capitalism works.
If you don’t like it, move to North Korea where the state “provides for all you needs.”
Ahhh WRONG its not $1310per mb
its only $1310 per mb IF YOU USE FULL 160 characters every time you text. I estimate its more like $5000 a mb based on the average length txt message people send or recieve.
Ie its 20 cents whether you text “ok” or “ok lets meet tonight at the arcade and have dinner afterwards”
fail
yeah, incredible fucking fail
Haha, he used the Bill Cosby method of reading I’m sure (reading the first sentence of every page)
The copy editor in me is looking at that image and it says:
.20¢
Technically, that is two-tenths of one cent.
It should be $0.20 or 20¢ if they mean 20 cents.
In which case, that’s quite a deal, I wonder if you could claim truth in advertising and actually get this price.
yeah, we know this already, but still use it all up. For the record, this is pretty much how it goes for all the providers. And it’s usually MMS, not just SMS. Not that it makes it any better.
I have three teenage daughters. 15,15 and 16. We share an unlimited text plan because if I paid per I would go into the poorhouse. Even one of those 1500 text plans would be a joke in my house.
On average; EACH of my daughters text about 2500 messages a month. One time my 16yo sent/recieved 733 SMS in a 5 day period.
On the positive flip side, they hardly use ANY talk minutes. That in turn means we can share a smaller shared minute plan. 20-30 bucks for unlim text looks pretty reasonable to me.
The mobile operators are charging for incoming (.20) SMS!!! They are keeping their free cellphonenumner@att.net open — they are hoping the spammers start using their free gatways. Either shut the gateways down or dont charge for incoming SMS.
This is EVIL. The FCC should do something!!!
This sucks. Perhaps we should send our sms’s from our pc instead
True, market conditions dictate the price. And the main reason one texts is because it is as close to private messaging as radio spectrum allows. By private, I mean no one hears you. Best invention for classrooms ever invented.
To Beta, if you want your girls to graduate, close all three accounts now. Since when did we ever believe this habit was an improvement on life?
My girls all have 3.8+ GPAs. Excellent scholastic records and very active in many school activities. Anytime I need advice on how to raise my kids though, I’ll give you a shout.
In Indonesia, a carrier named Esia (myesia.com) created a breaktrough. They charge SMS per character. If you send one character, you pay 1 IDR which equivalent with 0.000109 USD. I think this is the fairest price for consumer.
That’s more than the cost of Hubble data transmission.
I’m not a huge apple or at&t fan but i was really considering getting the 3G iphonebecause it has everything I want. The price for the old iphone was great at $59.99 a month. I can understand an extra $10 a month for the 3G phone because you’re getting a better service. But $5 for 200 text messages is a ripoff. Also, why is there no $10 a month text messaging plan? AT&T wants customers to come into their stores thinking their are getting a deal but in the end they are not.
I am now just going to get a Blackberry Curve from verizon. Their blackberry plan with data and 250 text messages comes out to be $75 a month. The 3g iphone plan with 200 text messages and e-mail service comes out to $90 a month. Over two years that is a difference of $360. Add in the difference of phones of about $150 thats a total savings of $510 over the entire thing. Though the Blackberry isn’t an iphone, i just hate being so obviously screwed by at&t.
These days kids blow through 1,500 texts a month and if you ever date one of these younger generation groupies you will certainly be upgrading to the unlimited text package!
You can say all this is a rip off, but consider this –
Building a network is expensive. The cost of a text message to a carrier is much more than just the data cost: add in the cost of a network, maintenance on the network, expanding the network to pay for the loads of people texting and calling, paying for people to answer the phones when you have a problem, saving some cash for lawsuits brought against them, phone subsidization (which is HUGE in the US), and add in a bit of revenue for them… Then take the fact that YOU are willing pay this, along with your phone bill. Why shouldn’t they charge .20 or .30 cents? Leave the US and you’ll EASILY pay more for your voice plan AND your text plan.
Don’t buy it if you don’t want to pay for it.
I agree with your premise, but I still think the cost is unreasonably high for AT&T customers. I resisted texting for a long time because I was really annoyed with the whole idea of THEM charging me for something I never needed. Then I got the LG enV from Verizon. That’s where my story about hating the idea of paying for texting comes to an end.
You are all likely too young to remember this but back in the day a pager (send numeric messages only for you young fellas) was something like $10 a month for unlimited pages. Once the price point was set, there wasn’t a chance to charge more. For texting, which is nearly the same thing, they weren’t going to make the same mistake. Cash cow. Same with satellite radio, which has ads now for one of them, should be free to consumers – one listener or a million doesn’t cost them any more. If anything, satellite fees should go down as more people join. Can’t see that happening.
I find it funny you are writing this article from your perspective only. I do agree with you that the .20 per text is ridiculous. You mention that the $20 for unlimited texts is ridiculous too. I couldn’t disagree more.
I am very thankful that AT&T has a $20 cap on text messaging. I had to reference my 75 page (if printed) AT&T bill for this one. I average between 1,900 and 2,000 texts per month. Think how much that would be if I didn’t have the plan. That’s $400 in texting alone. Thanks AT&T for saving me money!
Most iPhone users send a lot of data, whether it be internet, e-mail, texting or downloading music from the iTunes WiFi store. Apple hit the nail with the hammer when they marketed the phone to the young consumer at it’s initial launch.
Now it’s time to go after the Enterprise customer. Good luck Apple and AT&T!
kitchen white day sun stay yes australia english
Wow – I didn’t know crunchgear was into directly ripping off bloggers without giving credit. Tisk tisk.
http://gthing.net/the-true-price-of-sms-messages/
They make plenty of bucks off my voice plan and my data plan, I pay for unlimited data, and that should include txt messages.
For fucks sake I can send an email with essentially unlimited char. and it cost me nothing. but I want to send 15 char. and they want to charge me 20 cents.
Screw that.
Someone needs to write an app for WM6 that sends txt messages to the carriers portals.
P.S.
The math above is wrong (again) texts get charged twice (as was stated above) so its actually $.40 per txt message sent.
This is all wrong. Text messaging charges are not per data they are charged per text message. The only thing that is charged per kb is Internet usage if you do not have a package which is $ .01per kb which can get expensive. If you send a text message without a package it goes by these rates: $0.10 for incoming, $0.15 for incoming and $0.25 per picture message.
Fail. The article is about actual costs on AT&T’s end. NOT cost per text message.
The answer to your texting problems on the iPhone…download either the AOL app or Yahoo app, problem solved. FREE TEXT MESSAGING FOR ALL!
Hi webmaster!
Hi webmaster!
Spectacular Headline but not true.
Anyway, how much do you pay for each text message?
And who uses text messaging services without a plan? That is so 1999
Please. Does this really matter? Here in Australia we pay 23cents. I also think you’re forgetting to add in the costs to actually build the network that the text messages are sent on also. millions and millions. plus, if they own the network, they’re more than allowed to charge what they like! if you have a problem with the text messaging rates, go to a different service provider, simple.
If you have a family plan you should get the family unlimited plan. One of my 3 sonsgoes over 3600 txts a month and he is 12 years old and uses under 50 minutes a month.
There is a group for this. Join on Facebook. Together we’ll kick their butts :P
does it cost money to text a differenet country with at&t?
They also charge $.01 per kilobyte if you use THEIR store to buy THEIR stuff. I told them to disable data on my girlfriend’s phone because it costs so much just for the pleasure of shopping on their site. They tried to dismiss it stating “You pay your ISP for access to the internet when you’re shopping don’t you?”. However, my girlfriends limited surfing on their site in order to check out a few of their games ended up charging us $55 to download 5MB! Later, somehow they lost the configuration change and the same thing happened again. I had to argue with them for over an hour to get them to remove the charges. I had to demand escalation and tell them flat out that I WILL NOT PAY. Crooks! Verizon never charged me for browsing their online store, or if they did, the charge was so low I didn’t notice. If my ISP was AT&T, at these prices I would probably be paying $50,000 – $100,000 a month!
i have att and unlimited is better to have. but i can only send messages when i talk but not view them :[
Simple solution. I called AT&T and opted out of sending/receiving text messages. No charges for this outrageously priced feature. Guess I’m old fashioned, but my cell phone only makes or receives phone calls.
I agree that the cellphone providers are making an exorbitant amount of money on SMS considering how little it costs them to transmit a message. Unfortunately the only way to bring down the prices is to reduce demand, and demand is high. The problem is that the vast majority of people are uninformed about what an SMS message actually costs from a technical standpoint. Kudos to the author for raising awareness, even if the analysis isn’t precise. Though a statement like “text messages cost over $1000 per MB” certainly raises eyebrows.
I agree, the whole thing seems like a scam to me. On another issue, we have been checking our phone memory against the online records kept by AT&T and have noticed they double the number of texts sent and received. If we send a text at 5:30 it shows up on our records twice, at the correct time as shown on the phone, and again an hour later. We have unlimited texting now, but didn’t in November when our daughter was billed for 975 texts. She adamantly claimed she did not text that much and we believed her. We contested the bill, were unsuccessful, and currently are riding out our 2 year contract. But now we have proof that AT&T pads its bills and would like to fight it again. Anyone have this problem?
Thanks
I doubt they pad the bills. I did write a comment but I’ll repeat what I said. I have the 200 message plan and I always verify the accuracy of my bill every week. I go online or via the iPhone APP to see the activity. If anyone out there has a smart phone just use AIM or YAHOO to send/receive free texts!!! I can’t believe people do not know about this!!!
I have an iPhone with the 200 text plan. I agree 100% that the extra charge for texting is pure profit. If we pay $30 for an unlimited data plan the texting should fall under this category. In a sense it does because I use third party apps to send text messages. Only reason I have the 200 plan is in the event someone texts me and forgets my alternate text address. I do get back at ATT though. I tether and I really get my money’s worth! Screw them!!!
Anyone remember when ATT used to charge for touch tone? YES… they did. They phased it out when they realized that rotary phones were taking more computer access time to process!!
Atandt should just die. It is just ridiculos how much they are charging for every freaking gig this and text of that…. good thing we are free to choose except if you are tangle in a freaking contract whre you must pay 200.00 to get out of their trap. but once i am gone I am gone for good.
Go virgin mobile!!!