Is there any reason, beyond corporate greed, for SMS messages to cost so much?
If I get it right, an SMS message is just a short string of data, no different from a message we send in a messenger. If so, then what makes them so expensive? If we’d take Internet plans and consider how much data an SMS takes, we should pay tiny fraction of a cent for each message; why doesn’t that happen?
its crazier than you think… the original sms messaging was sent over an already existent, in process data path… they didnt really have to add much to the system to accommodate it, yet charged an obscene amount per message
the answer is simple; because they can
Messages went from $.05, to $.10, to $.20 to send and receive. That was in the span of three years. All of the companies said it wasn’t collision. They just happened to arrive upon massive increases separately.
If I recall, one of the CEOs said “We’re raising the prices to save customers money. This way they’ll be an unlimited plan”
The telcos should have been broken up then. Instead we’ve seen even more mergers.
- Edit: forgot to include the years. This was in the U.S. circa 2005-2008. Telcos have moved onto other sleezy practices now.*
You had to pay to receive? wtf.gif
So some rando could ruin you by sending a bazillion SMS messages?
You could ignore them and not recieve. But then you’ve got a billion pending messages that you don’t know the content of.
This was certainly in the US at one point. I remember having 500 per month, which was an absolute joke for 16 year old me with a girlfriend the next town over, and paying 25 send and 5 receive afterwards. Old cell plans were absolute trash.
It still does.
SMS is sent within unassigned space within management frames.
Cell works kind of like ATM - Asynchronous Transfer Mode, which unlike packet-switched networks, continually transmits frames (even empty ones), as a means of ensuring stable, performant delivery.
Like ATM, cell kind of does the same thing (that is, when it makes a connection).
Within those frames are segments which are allocated for different purposes, someone got the great idea to transmit bits within a segment that wasn’t yet assigned to anything by the standard.
Those segments can hold… 160 characters (IIRC), and for technical reasons, this became 140 characters (again, IIRC).
So whenever your phone pings a tower, those frames get sent. From a bare transmission perspective, there’s no additional cost. The cost is on the backend hardware that extracts the SMS and the routing of it. So there’s some cost, but at 10 cents per message, there’s got to be 9.9 cents of gross profit (just guessing).
Beyond corporate greed, there is none. SMS’ are even sent as part of routine packets on the cellular network so they don’t even take extra data. Carriers might pay extra for inter carrier routing, but again the cost associated with that is mostly corporate greed.
You compare to the internet but you have to remember, back when SMS’ were the only player in terms of cellular messaging, cellular data cost an arm and a leg.
As far as I could understand, North American carriers charged through the nose for mobile data for the longest time, but usually bundled SMS with some plans in some form, be it a set number of messages, or unlimited nights/weekends (oof, I don’t feel younger typing that one out). I was a student working for one of our Canadian carriers the first time I saw more than like a gig of data for less than 70$/month, and that was in the long term contracts, cancellation fees days lol
In most of the rest of the world, data became cheaper faster, but SMS was/is still expensive. This, combined with iPhone’s popularity in NA making people use iMessage, led to a lot of people just sticking to the defaults and use SMS on one side of the Atlantic, while the rest used WhatsApp or similar.
Pretty much, it was still expensive af though. I got my first cellphone in 1999 with Fido. Probably paid something like 50$ month and that came with like 100 texts messages and not very many minutes of local only calling.
My first non-prepaid plan with something that was not the cheapest flip phone possible, must have been around 2006-2007, with a slide phone, and the very minimum plan I could get which was, IIRC, 50 minutes of local calls, unlimited nights and weekends, and exactly zero text messages included, no caller ID nor voicemail 😂 First time I had a data plan was in late 2011, when I got my first smartphone (Galaxy SII), and that was definitely less than 1GB/month…
There was potential legislation and a lot of congressional probes in the mid-late 2000’s in the US that essentially forced cellular carriers to publicly admit that it cost next to nothing on their end to send SMS messages(like 10-7¢ per message) yet they charged insane premiums for them of 20¢ per message. This ended up being the catalyst for US carriers dropping most SMS charges to stay competitive while the rest of the world just changed over to alternate messaging services to avoid the fees instead like you said.
SMS are completely free? I mean yeah, they cost money back in 2009, but that was a loooooong time ago.
Wherever you are, you’re being completely screwed, yeah.
Yes they are? I guess maybe not up north but in every province they sure are
Most plans other than the absolute bottom contain effectively unlimited SMS.
- Freedom Mobile’s cheapest phone plan is $19/month with unlimited calls and SMS: https://shop.freedommobile.ca/en-CA/plans
- Public Mobile’s cheapest plan is $15/month with unlimited calls and SMS: https://subscribe.publicmobile.ca/en/on/activation/plans/unlimitedtalk&text
Wait, I haven’t paid for text messages in probably 15 years. Where do they still charge for SMS? It’s usually unlimited with any plan that I’ve seen
Pay-as-you-go is still popular in poorer markets, more rural areas or even in pro-competitive markets. It’s only particularly scummy markets that force customers to use their credit within a certain time period so for those who only rarely call/text and have consistent access to wifi, even 5-10 dollars worth of credit can last a year or more. Extremely consumer-friendly.
Yeah, I’m within the reach of wifi almost constantly. Only need to call or send an SMS very rarely, so I’m quite happy to just have credit as backup. I get the feeling my provider would really love to get me on some monthly plan, but that ain’t happening if I can help it.
For such limited usage, it’s absolutely not worth monthly. Unlimited for X amount is only good value if you’re making enough use out of it to outweigh the cost of PAYG. I used to travel for work and even at a bargain price of ~$10 for 20GB/unlimited/unlimited, I was only really using my data for Spotify while driving so come the end of the monthly cycle, I’d have an evening of watching YT or whatever else on my data since I’d still typically have about half left.
Really basic plans still charge you. When I was in school, my parents gave me a dumb phone with a plan that cost 10 cents per minute of calling or 10 cents per sms. MMS didn’t even work. Ridiculously expensive, but at the amount I was using still cheaper than anything else
Where are you that you’re paying anything extra for sms? They used to be expensive because they could charge that much, now that are included in even the cheapest prepaid plans. If you are paying per message, that’s a you problem and you need to find another wireless provider.
There is a large contrast in this regard between NA and Europe. In Europe data is dirt cheap and wifi is usually available anyways so messaging over whatsapp/signal/whatever is much more common than trying to use SMS. In America public wifi is extremely rare and businesses are so spread out that coverage is limited… people also tend to use iPhones which default you into their shitty iMessage - SMS was also traditionally much cheaper so it’s more of a habit in NA.
GSM SMS protocol is the same on both continents. The reason SMS became free in the US with 4G, was as an attempt to level competition for cell phones that weren’t iPhone, since the iMessage protocol uses data transmission rather than SMS. Now that Android uses RCS, which is also data transmission, the only use for SMS is Android to iPhone texting and dumb phones.
None of that is actually true as a contrast.
There are tons of free wifi networks from hotels to restaurants, etc.
None of what you are saying makes any sense.
In Barcelona, I can go for a ten mile walk and constantly be in range of 3+ open wifi networks. In America it’s not uncommon to be out of range of wifi when standing on the curb closest to a restaurant or hotel… additionally American wifi networks are much less likely to be open and municipal services are less well funded.
There’s literally like four places with free wifi in my entire town. Most of the restaurants don’t have it, and we only have two hotels… neither of which has properly free wifi- you have to get a room to use it.
If you need to send SMS commercially they’re still generally priced at $0.03 each. I just had to deal with that because some users will apparently only turn on MFA if they can get the codes by txt.
In the wild west days of the internet we used to connect consumer CDMA phones straight to our servers. You’d walk around your COLO and peek in racks of crazy expensive, rack mounted hardware with the world’s cheapest flip phone sitting on top.
The telcos caught wind and started terminating accounts. It was a great way to have a server tell you it fell off the network.
I spend about £15 per year on my phone. No way that could be beaten with a contract. I’m still annoyed at how expensive it is though
Where did I say anything about a contract? I spend $1800/year for 4 lines, 3 personal and 1 work line. In the USA at least, prepaid beats postpaid/contract every day of the year. Every time I price moving all 4 lines over to postpaid to get easier access to esims, a little leeway on payment, etc, I always end up staying with prepaid.
I assumed it was the same thing. In the UK, all our phones are prepaid. You can either get a contract for a set monthly amount, or you buy credit which you spend over time (which presumably is what you mean by prepaid).
While we’re on the subject, is it true that you have to pay to receive calls in the US?
