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.*
They fucked themselves. It became more worthwhile to just use data.
And who provides the data?
WiFi?
I’m not sure who in this chain is joking, lol
WiFi isn’t free. And Idk about you, but where I live the internet service providers are the same as cell providers. I have AT&T for internet, for example. So they still get the money.
But with WiFi, you don’t have to pay extra for more data usage.
That depends. Where I used to live, Comcast had a monopoly and a data cap.
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.
The messages weren’t pushed to you? You got a notification and then had to request the actual message? That would be even more stupid, as it’s using twice the bandwidth.
That’s how it worked on my old phone, you got a message notification but it cost you to actually read it. No clue if they sent the message content before the paywall or if it pulled it down afterward.
But it also meant you could use your phone basically as a beeper without paying for texts. Just see who sent you a message, ignore the actual message and call them.
I know you meant collusion, but in case anyone else didn’t, it’s not collision.
Where is this?
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.
Jesus. I remember my first cell was $35/month, 350 minutes of talk, no data and unlimited texts, before smart phones. On contact.
Yeah, I remember when they started rolling out data plans and they were hefty and the Internet on phones was useless. Then GPS on your phone was an add-on, also hefty. So it’s definitely improved.
Probably trying to get the last juice to squeeze as more and more traffic moves to web based messaging
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…
If you think you’re old, I started with a Nokia 5110…
Oh I don’t think I’m particularly old, statistically speaking I’ve got about the same amount or a bit more left to go… We just all have those moments that make you realize time flies, don’t we?
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.
I quit with WhatsApp when Meta acquired it.
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.
They aren’t free in Canada.
Yes they are? I guess maybe not up north but in every province they sure are
No they aren’t, you might have an unlimited plan but that’s different
Depends what you mean by free, but in BC any of the lowest cost plans ($15/month) have unlimited SMS included with the plan. The only time I paid per text was on a pre-paid SIM.
$15 bruv I’m paying €6 per month for 250MB of data, 100min calling and yes, already unlimited SMS
NL btw
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
I think my phone plan (in Japan) charges for outgoing SMS. I don’t think it’s much. I think some plans maybe include it. We all use LINE here (like much of Europe uses Whatsapp) so most people aren’t sending text messages regularly if at all.
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.
I rode a prepaid plan like that for about 5 years, it’s honestly great. Everyone thought I was crazy when I said it cost me to text them lol but my cost was maybe ~$1/month. Now I’m on 50GB of data, but I travel almost constantly so it was finally worth 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.
Worst is it gets you into the mindset of “I have this much for the month so I might as well use it” and influence you to use it more. I don’t want that.
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
https://www.mintmobile.com/plans/
All plans include unlimited talk and text.
That’s 5x what I paid.
The last phone I ever had that dinged me for SMS messages was the tracfone I owned when that was all I could afford. I think that might have been like a decade or so ago? Maybe closer to 15 like you were saying.
Assuming you’re in UK or Ireland, most of the world still pays for SMS.
Not in the US. Smartphones killed that shit.
But there was a time where people did the math, and SMS was more expensive than what it costs NASA to get data from the Hubble.
Not in Poland either
Most of EU don’t pay for sms either
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.
All of that is true, and makes perfect sense. It all depends on where you live, of course.
Not everyone lives in densely packed urban areas.
That’s hilarious. I currently live where I can see like 3 of my neighbors.
And? I can see several neighbors’ residences. We barely get cell signal half the time, and the only Internet currently is dodgy WiFi, which also regularly goes wonky. A lot of times we can walk into nearby establishments and leave empty -handed, because Internet is down and we don’t have cash enough in have to make our purchases.
Sounds like you need to move away from the actual sticks.
I call where I am country’ish because while I have only a handful of neighbors, we have gigabit down from spectrum, damn near gig over 5g, etc.
🤨
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 want to get technical, my town (really a village) has zero free wifi networks. It’s the larger city to my south that has all of the restaurants, hotels, retail, etc with free wifi.
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.
OP didn’t clarify personal versus business. I’m aware of how much businesses get ripped off, I’ve looked into using the short codes for promoting my own business and shit is not cheap.
I considered setting up a raspberry pi with a 4g hat because of that.
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?
is it true that you have to pay to receive calls in the US?
I’m not certain what you’re asking. Are you asking if someone can call you and make you pay for it? Not that I’ve ever seen. With the exception of jails/prisons- inmates can collect call you. I imagine it’s a thing in other contexts, but not that I’ve ever experienced.
Generally, ime pretty much everyone has unlimited calls and texts these days. It’s pretty dirt cheap. Data is much more expensive and limited. Even “unlimited” data plans are only technically so- after some arbitrary but generally high amount of data they’ll throttle the absolute hell out of you.
I’ve got this weird half-remembered thought in my head that you don’t have a separate set of phone numbers for mobile / cell vs landline (in the UK, all mobile numbers start 07… ). Therefore you don’t know who you’re calling so it wouldn’t be possible to charge extra when calling a cell phone, therefore the owner of the cell phone has to pay that extra amount.
Like I said, it’s just a vague half-memory and I could have completely made it up. That’s why I’m asking
SMS piggybacks on existing signals to and from your phone. They are entirely free, and have been in a lot of places for a long time.
You’re getting screwed. At least it’s a good reason for your contacts to switch to signal or simpleX?
This isn’t really true anymore. Originally it was and because SMS was rarely used it was effectively free. But then it grew more popular to the point where most messages didn’t have “unused bandwidth” to piggyback on and had to be sent separately. Now days all traffic is basically data traffic and SMS isn’t hiding in some unused space.
That being said it is still so close to free that it doesn’t really matter. Sending 140 bytes of low-priority data is a rounding error.
Huh, TIL. Thanks!
I know it doesn’t help, but Europeans have always been amazed how much you guys were charged for SMS. Even in 1999, over here messages cost a fraction of what you were charged - that you pay for them at all these days is just mind-boggling.
American profit seeking at its finest
They’re in Russia. I don’t know anybody in the US (I assume you’re talking about) who pays for SMS.
Who were you texting in 1999? Cell phones weren’t very common then.
Probably me on my Nokia 5110 with the slick custom faceplate, extra thiccccc battery, and analog external module.
I always wanted a Nokia - I know it was a cliche, but I was amazed at how indestructible they were. Even when they did actually break apart, you could just pick up the bits, clip them back together, and it would just work again - with no visible damage.
Also, SNAKE
Obviously I updated my 5110 to a 3310 only a few years later!
But to be honest I think my all time favorite will always stay my Ericsson T610/630… I kept that thing for over seven years. It rocked. Even had Bluetooth which I used to connect with my X10 home automation.
I started university in 1999. Pretty much everyone had a mobile phone there. They were fairly new, granted, but they were pretty ubiquitous.
I was late getting a flip phone, but I did in 02. Everyone else I knew already had mobile devices.
By 02 texting & cellphones were somewhat common. In 1999 people were only really using cellphones to make calls and they were less common than pagers.
It’s funny. My general region uses text but really only phones if it’s really important right this moment. We do have the phone conversations when it’s too much to text though.
They were called pagers back then.
Bullshit
Please elaborate on how wrong you are. There were still pay phones everywhere in 99 because cell phones weren’t common yet.
Unlimited SMS is on most cell phone plans nowadays, at least in Canada.
On a slightly different tack: I run a website, and I choose not to implement SMS for notifications - only email. Email is free. Adding SMS, even at $0.007 per message, could add up to big bucks.
Where I live I haven’t seen non unlimited SMS or calls on normal plans in forever.
Sending an SMS as an operation is just as expensive as checking for signal. Which every phone is constantly doing.
I didnt know SMS is expensive. I know it was but i thought it was free nowadays.
When you say free, as in totally free that you can send and receive anytime even without a plan? Or you mean free because it is already included in your prepaid or postpaid plan?
Free as in: unlimited calls and texts are included in pretty much all but the most bargain bin plans nowadays.
I was looking for a new cell provider a couple months ago, and I honestly don’t recall even seeing a plan that didn’t come with unlimited talk and text.
Outside of the legally required 911 you’re not getting anything for 100% free from a carrier, because why would they?
What are you paying for SMS? I pay 6 euro a month for unlimited sms and calls and 2 GB data. 50+ mobiel is my provider. Now they offer my plan with the first year for 2,5 euro. Dirt cheap.
Yeah, I drop the equivalent of 16€ and I get 60GB data and unlimited calls and SMS with my Danish provider. Having to pay for SMS is purely corporate greed.
What about sending sms to other countries though? I have free domestic sms but pay like 0.20€ for international (within EU).
I pay 0,07€ international, vice versa is free roaming.
Around 0,03 euro per SMS - not huge, but when someone contacts you via SMS and you have to communicate this way, money disappear quickly.
What country?
Russia
Generally a destination with cheap mobile communications. But unlimited SMS messages are not universally featured.
lol russian
They aren’t the cost was arbitrarily chosen 30 odd years ago and hasnt changed in all that time despite there being several free alternatives. Data usage doesnt cost what they charge either. Its all a scam.
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Are they? I have plans in both the UK and France, and I think they’re both unlimited sms. Not expensive plans, I think the UK one is £7 for unlimited sms, unlimited calls and 20gb of data. French one was 13€ for unlimited sms/calls, and 130gb data on 5g.
7 euros for 20gb of data? I’m paying close to $30 a month for 1 gig and if I cross that the bill shoots up to $40 Fucking American Capitalism.
lol
I pay 15€ a month in Portugal for unlimited data, sms, calls etc and it even includes roaming in the rest of Europe 😊
I pay $170/ month for two phones in the States. I wouldn’t say that SMS is free, but I can send an unlimited amount of messages with that plan.
85 per phone? did you get suckered into a contract+new “free” iPhone or something? I pay 40/mo for unlimited everything in the States but could be paying 25-30 if I wanted to switch providers.
SMS message costs are a scam, always have been. It takes like 1-2 seconds worth of talk time for the same amount of sending a text.
What provider are you using? Both AT&T and Verizon are on the order of $80/mo for an individual, down to like $30/person/mo for a family of 5.
T-Mobile prepaid. Mint mobile is also very cheap, but I think there is one cheaper now.
I just looked it up and the $40 T-Mobile prepaid plan has a 10GB data limit. Tbh that’s probably plenty for most people, but it’s not unlimited. Their $50/mo option is unlimited, with caveats (such as throttling once you’ve used too much data).
They are going to monitor your traffic and throttle based on estimated video streaming speed on any of their plans.
Still pretty good compared to ATT and Verizon. Unfortunately I’m stuck with the provider I’m using since they seem to be the only one with good cover wage in my area.
Ah I should have taken into account that I am grandfathered in from the AT&T takeover. That makes more sense.
Holy hell. Sure, I bought my phone (a OnePlus 9) out of pocket but I pay about 20 USD for unlimited calls and SMS with 5Gb of data per month (I can also save unused data from each month to the other up to 15Gb). This is in Sweden for reference.
Holy smokes that’s expensive :D 85 bucks per phone per month
