@Colage: no, i wouldn't care at that moment if it was 20cents or $5. it's just a single scenario where a text message would prove a necessity and not a luxury.

and for the record, i never text, because i use my phone for calling...and occasionally taking worthless grainy pictures.

Their response to the inquiry will include both pay per use pricing and
package pricing; they have non-similar pricing structures when you factor in
packages.

The simple fact of the matter is, pay per use pricing has gone up while
package pricing has gone down. One poster commented on the price difference
between 1500 and unlimited; at the time that the pay per use rate was
.10/msg, these packages were 1000 for $15 and 2500 for $20. When the rate
went to .15/msg, it changed to unlimited in-network and 1000 out of network
for $15, and unl in-network and 2500 out-of-network for $20. When the PPU
price went to .20, it changed to 1500 out of network on the $15, and
completely unlimited for $20. $30 now gets you unlimited on an entire
family plan...for a family of 5, that works out to $6 per phone. When I
worked in the industry, I'd routinely see families that would crest 25000
txts in a single month with 2 or 3 teenagers. That works out to $.0012 per
message. Years ago, when I got my AT&T Wireless phone when I turned 18, I
got 1000 txt for $20. PPU was .10/msg with free incoming. If a family used
those same 25000 text messages, assuming half are incoming and spread evenly
between all 5 lines, you would pay $50 in package charges, and an additional
$400 in overages. $30 vs $450. And people complain that it has gotten more
expensive?

As a former industry insider, here's the nitty-gritty: Packages have become
far more economical, for two reasons. 1) Revenue from monthly recurring
charges factors into ARPU, making financial statements look impressive. 2)
Less huge bills from customers overusing results in fewer unhappy customers,
and lower churn.

And pay per use has gotten more expensive simply to offset revenue loss from
the packages. This is targetting the extremely light user who won't notice
that this month they paid $1 instead of $.50 for the few messages they use.

And as for the allegations of price fixing, they are completely untrue.
There's always a stagger between when one carrier raises their rates and any
other ones do. When one carrier raises them, other carriers evaluate how
this affects churn and gross subscriber additions. If 2 weeks go by after
Sprint raises their text rate on pay per use, and vzw doesn't see a
noticeable impact on the amount of port-ins, they raise their rates to take
advantage of a higher revenue stream. Their sales people are specifically
told to use that as a differentiator to close sales. The bottom line,
though, is the only people that care are the people who are either already
angry at their current provider, or looking for a way to get out of their
contract early.

@Diet-Orange-Soda: "Good. It costs me $1 now for a quick message & response with my wife now. There's not reason for that."

Why not use that regular phone plan, that's probably "free" between your family members, and not incure ANY extra cost? The IM and texting mania is lost on me. It's amazing to me what people consider "necessities" these days, and then complain when the companies screw them over for that "necessity" (cable, satellite, cell phones).

IF people didn't text, talk, watch so much I bet there'd be LOTS of price reductions and competition.

I look forward to the day they master abstract reasoning (eighth grade or so, I'm told), and can figure out that allowing endless consolidations and removing regulations doesn't, in fact, "create competition".

That day, I will be ready with TWO gold stars.

I'm willing to bet that increasing a regular source of revenue is more valuable to them than increasing varying amounts of revenue from one off messages since it is more reliable and more than anything, shareholders want RELIABLE profits. That is why publicly traded companies see their share price get dinged if they come in OVER earnings estimates.

@EricLecarde: I can't speak for cable but Congress HAS brought oil execs to the hill a number of times in the past couple of years.

Wait, gas prices have more than tripled in the past 6 years. Cable in my area has slowly increased base prices every year. Yet, Congress is asking why text messaging plans have gone up 10 cents? Wow, where are our priorities.

Seems like we are going the opposite way though...slower speeds, data caps, and it costs more to communicate as time goes on. All of these companies are in collusion.

NO MORE NANNY STATE, STOP MEDDLING WITH EVERYTHING, FEDS!

Text messeges cost more because it is easy, and popular. I text all the time, because it is much easier then calling someone and having a 10 minute conversation full of "small talk" just to accomplish something small. Phone companies know they can gouge the prices for txt, so they do. My unlimited data transfer costs $29 per month, but doesn't include text, that is extra. Unlimited data my ass.

In China, they sell Cell phone plans based on the TEXTING! For instance, you get x number of free texts per month, and every minute of talking is so much $$. (Yuan actually but my keyboard don't got that symbol. hehe)

I'm a computer nerd and I can tell you that texting *probably* takes much, much less resources to handle over a cell network than voice does. I have a friend that's an engineer for sprint; I could ask him.

But like I said, probably nobody cares about my comment.

This is actually not the case. I work for an inter-carrier SMS messaging company, and industry SLAs are aimed to guarantee delivery in less than one second. If it takes more than 10 seconds to get an SMS, something is wrong. If it takes more than a minute, you can be guaranteed that there are some very annoyed engineers working on the issue.

If you think $.20 per SMS is expensive, give it a couple months. SMS rates are moving up to $.25 per message, and major carriers are already preparing their communications to customers. I look forward to a day where all data sent over my phone is billed the same, whether it's a voice call, SMS, MMS, or Internet usage. Give me a fair per-megabyte rate and let me go from there. Unfortunately, this would require actual regulation from the FCC, and will never happen. Our only hope is Google being incredibly disruptive with their WiMax 4G services.

Look people. Especially you simplistic neoclassical "supply and demand" freaks. You ought to know that market intervention is necessitated by market failure, and I'm sure its also quite obvious to you that all forms of monopolistic/oligarchic pricing schemes ARE MARKET FAILURE. They are defined as such, to begin with, because they slam Pareto efficiency to shit.

It is so easy for you to say "well they pay it, so it must be worth that much to them!" This is because you only quantify the supply-side (producer) surplus, which yes, I know is easier because dollars make more sense than utility functions. The problem is that market clearing assumptions (perf. comp. mkt, flexible P, etc.) are not in this case about merely "making people happy" or "forcing down prices of luxury goods" but a matter of policy violations.

In constructing the public telephone network, which still forms the backbone of the wireless telephony industry, the gov't gained full policy control over its use. It deregulated the AT&T and the Bells b/c of concerns of abuse of the power over what is essentially a PUBLIC UTILITY - like sewer, water, garbage disposal, gas and electric. You might not like it but Congress must intervene when companies abuse its network to wring helpless consumer necks.

189,000 bytes / 160 bytes = 1181 or so txt messages on any cell carrier to load this page

1181 txt messages @ 20 cents each = $236

So, it'd be roughly $236 at the current structure to load a single webpage. And data is data whether it's SMS or HTML.

Just had a discussion about texting with the neighbors tonight. Our conclusion is that it's glorified note passing. What could be so important that it couldn't wait until you got to a time and place where you could call, or email someone? Plus those T9 keyboards or those itsy bitsy Qwerty keyboards are just a joke.

I say keep the prices high. You're subsidizing those of us who don't use it.

I pay 45 cents/minute outside of my voice plan (although I've only went over one time).

Paying 20 cents/message outside of a texting plan doesn't seem that far off.

Unfortunately, the cellular companies do not compete in a Capitalism 101 free market. They are regulated in exchange for the privilege of using a chunk of wireless spectrum. Nobody can convince me that we'd be better off with a spectrum that runs on the survival-of-the-fittest principal.

Besides, OPEC charges what the market will bear too. Seems to be working great of course.

Regulate these bastards like a utility.

I use US Cellular (a midwest company) that doesn't charge for incoming text or pictures... as it should be. I'd get pretty danged mad if my cellular company tried charging me for something I did request...

If you don't understand why price fixing is a really, really bad thing, I recommend the following article from Wikipedia: [en.wikipedia.org]

Would you think it was okay if all the supermarkets in the country suddenly decided to raise the price of food 10 fold? Competition breeds excellence including fair prices. Anticompetitive behavior like SMS fees rape consumers over the coals.

@AustinTXProgrammer: So you're saying they are billing us because it costs money to bill us? I'm not sure I see how that is fair.

But I agree with the rest of your comment.

Yes, I'd also like a luxury service where I get to set the price (how about zero?!?) and have Congressman strong-arm companies into giving it to me at the price I demand.

This is moronic. Companies charge what they can get. Either stop using the service or stop bitching about it. Is anyone really arguing that they are "forced" or "coerced" into using this service? Or that it's even a necessity?

Anyone paying 15 or 20 cents per text needs to seriously reevaluate their phone plan.

Still, they could charge a penny and come out ahead. If they chose not to bill (no integration costs with the rest of the billing system), and dropped the retention period (for diagnostic purposes), they could drop the price to 0 and still do fine.

One thing people have continued to say is that the price increases are justified because "people are willing to pay them!" Several people have echoed that sentiment here. These are the kind of people who troll around the Internet looking for places where they can show how smart they are compared to everyone else. "No duh! All you sheeple don't get it, but I do!"

The fact is that just because someone pays for something doesn't mean the price is justified. Is it justified that a friend of mine went $400,000 in debt because he got brain cancer while he was uninsured? Just because his family was willing to pay to save his life, is the cost justified? Is the price of gasoline justified just because people need to drive and products need to be sent on trucks from point A to point B? Is the price of the Iraq war justified just because our government is willing to make us pay it?

Text messages are OVERPRICED and there is NO JUSTIFICATION. They cost virtually nothing to send and are sent in such a way they don't even use up "prime" network resources.

The true costs associated with text messaging:
-The servers required to manage the sms system (these are pretty expensive but it's a one time cost).
-The cost of transfering 140 bytes of information (usually much less) which piggybacks on packets that are being sent around the network anyway.
-Cross carrier text messages cost your carrier somewhere around 1 penny. Keep under consideration that when you send a text message to someone on another carrier they usually send one back, meaning that these costs probably pretty much cancel each other out at the end of the month.

So why are we paying $.40 cents per text messages? Yes, $.40 - remember we're paying to send AS WELL AS receive each message. I can get a letter hand delivered by a human to any address in the United states for 42 cents.

The bottom line is that $1 worth of data transfer from your ISP would cost over $61 million dollars if that data were transfered over sms messages. I can understand a premium, but not a premium 61 million times the cost of bulk data from your ISP.

I recommend reading the article I linked to above. It was widely covered in the mainstream media as well as the blogosphere.

If so, you're probably not worth kidnapping. =p

Demand.

Do the math!

After this, I hope the good Senator tackles the outrageous pricing of a $4.85 Starbucks mocha. And then $24.99 priced Blu-ray DVDs. And then $25 haircuts...

You know, outside the states, texts are so cheap that most phone services offer them for free, because it costs almost nothing to provide the service and it's a great way to get people to use your network without using up a lot of bandwidth.

I think they keep jacking up the price is because they want to force people into buying all inclusive, unlimited plans which provide much more service (and cost) than most people need. I pay $30/month for a bare-bones serice which gives me nothing but phone calls. As I use my phone rarely, I'm cool with that, but I'm constantly being pressured to switch to a plan that incluides "unlimited free texting" or else I'll be punished with a 50 cent fee every time I want to send a 128 character message.

The major mobile providers have a ton of "churn." Very little loyalty and they are always looking for the next gimmick to poach another provider's clients and lock them in to long-term contracts.

Text messages are almost a pure-profit venture.

Yet despite these two conditions the fact that none of the major providers has stepped out of line and offered huge discounts on text messaging in exchange for more expensive long term agreements is very suspicious to me.

Here in KC, home to behemoth Sprint, we have Cricket - same services as the others only everything is included in the plan for one price. We travel all over and have had service just about everywhere (except for the sticks, but no on really covers there). If they are not where you are, they will be soon. I pay less than $50 for unlimited everything - web, text, voice, bells, whistles and no contract. DISCLAIMER: my husband is one of their network engineers, but we had them before he worked for them. Highly recommended!

Seriously people, you only have yourselves to blame. Stop texting so gd much and the prices will stop going up, and maybe even down. My plan includes texts, but I'll call anyone back who texts me, or send them an email. Companies know how to make money, and will get as much out of you as they can. I think the "because" answer other people brought up will be basically what they tell Herbie.

And yeah, stop charging me to receive a text. 200 texts a month with you data plan? More like 100 assuming an even send/receive ratio.

I think Kohl's teenager texted one too many times and now he's annoyed that he has to pay so much.

I agree w/ dveight, we need to be able to reject incoming text, like we can reject incoming phone calls, otherwise don't charge for incoming text.

My SO and I have a grandfathered plan that allows us unlimited "text only" text meassages for $10/month per phone. I can't even imagine how much we'd be paying otherwise.

But we've had to guard that plan with our lives, even forgoing the rebate on my new phone to maintain it.

Wouldn't it be exciting to see some anti-trust lawsuit action happening, though!!? Rebates for everyone!!

Text messaging gets a quick/important message by much faster then leaving a voice mail, so I use it with my fiancee when we have important info that we need to tell each other (and no, "just saying hi" or "what's up" is not important) and that is why we have it enabled. What sucks with when other people that send shit like that to us, and we have to pay it.

Fortunately, we keep our cost under $5 each a month for texting, so it has not been worth it to us to buy a bulk plan.

My Orange (UK) PAYG plan gives me 300 free texts if I top-up by £10/month. As it happens I rarely do, so texts cost me about 10p each and of course, nothing to receive.

@dequeued: I agree. Especially since many people don't even own a landline, but have switched to cell phones as their primary form of voice service, mobile service becomes even more of a "utility" and less of a luxury each passing day, and should be regulated as such.

Of course, it still sucks when grandma only has a cell for emergencies but a text spammer starts running up her bill, but like I said, make it easier then for texts to get filtered or blocked on her phone.

Viva the free market, eh Blade? Deregulators make me sick. Thanks so much for Enron.

4 companies, 90% of the market. That's supposed to drive competition?

Free market economics works great in theory and on paper, but reality proves time and time again that it is unsustainable without regulation, and CERTAINLY unsustainable when these companies are awarded for behavior that goes directly against the principle.

Case Study: AT&T buys up many small local wireless carriers under AT&T Wireless brand. It can't find sustainability in its growth and pricing models, so it spins the unit off.

Cingular purchases the now-spun AT&T Wireless, a company that grew much like Cingular itself had. Once most of the expense of growth is completed, AT&T moves back in and buys the farm for a bargain price versus what that much growth would have taken.

So, we go from many local carriers, to many less regional carriers, down to 1 national carrier - and this took what, 7 years start to finish?

Eventually, just as when Ma Bell was broken up, government will realize its own people are getting reamed and slice and dice the offenders (even though they profited the entire time to turn their heads). It's a constant race between this and the offenders staying moving quickly enough to not get stagnant and busted.

Thus begins the cycle again. Ma Bell was broken into 7 RBOC's, and yet now, barely 25 years later, we are down to 3, all of them re-joining through mergers/acquisitions.

It wasn't good for consumers 25 years ago, yet since they've been allowed to do it again?

Yay for the free market!

I hope the government forces them to not charge anything for text messages.
Or maybe just a nominal fee to prevent people from abusing or spamming.
I think I would be okay with them capping the text rate at 1 cent per message after the first 100 messages, per month.

The phone companies should be thankful, they would still be making a hefty profit at that rate.

@Colage: hostage in the back seat, with the kidnapper driving. tell someone where you are, everything, with only a little click (easily inaudible in contrast to the car sounds) and get saved.

there is 1 situation you would need it. you're welcome : )

No.
Communications is an essential utility, like Water or Electricity.
Indeed, the government agrees because they are so in bed with the communications companies, for better or worse...

But so long as a company gets a penny of my tax dollars, their internal workings are a PUBLIC MATTER.

The phone companies want to have their cake and eat it too; they want the privileges of a utility company, yet they want to fully exploit their position.

I can understand WHY they do it, they are a for profit business.
But it's still wrong.

If you're texting enough for the 20 cents to add up to anything, you should probably get a plan. I never talk, and just use texting. I have the unlimited text, much cheaper than using the phone for calls actually. But I guess his generation didn't text, so it probably scares him.

@Colage: I'm not sure if texting is a luxury. I guess its how you define luxury.

For most people, texting is for situations where you cannot talk with someone, but requires a quick response.

"Text messaging is a cash cow. It is what makes cheaper voice plans & free nights and weekends possible."

Free nights and weekends, and as cheap, and sometimes cheaper voice plans, existed before most people knew they could text message.

1 txt message = $.0001 worth of bandwidth.

Unlike calls a txt message does not need to be sent instantly. It can arrive a couple min later with nobody the wiser and often they do. They also have so little real data in them they take up just about zero bandwidth, even at max size limit.

Now I could understand 15 cents for a picture or video message, but pure text should be 100% free for at least the first 500 messages per month. Anything over that I would consider in excess and the person should be charged a flat $5 fee for that month.

I find it curious that the iPhone text messaging price structure is different than a PDA or "standard" cell phone. It's still the same 140-160 bytes on the same data network.

Oh andto those of you saying to "block" texts from your phone via your carrier. That's all well and good advice, provided you do not own an iphone.

And Text only plans are only available to the legally deaf. Wasn't this covered here already?

Texting is a luxury. I can't think of a single situation where someone would need to text someone else.

On the bight side, I am still saving money by not paying Verizon $45 a month for a service I hardly used and instead pay ATT $10ish a month to top up. So I guess I really shouldn't complain too much.

What I don't get is why people spend five minutes typing crap with T9 text entry that they coulda called and said in 5 seconds. I have a Smartphone with qwerty keyboard and I hate it when friends text me since I spend most of my time behind the wheel. I'd rather just they tell me what they need over the phone so I can call them back later.

I was under the assumption that txting was still 10 cents a text!

You're kidding me, right?
Oh, gee, I don't know why they should justify the cost.
Perhaps because they get massive subsidies and infrastructure right-of-ways, and all sorts of other privileges thanks to the government.

This debate is very similar to net neutrality...

In exchange for that, there is a presumption that they should act in the public good, or at least not outright swindle the public by charging unjustifiable rates for text messages.

And if you don't like it, you can start your own cell phone company OH NO WAIT YOU CAN'T!

you have oligopoly controlling a sector where 1 company was already broken up due to being a monopoly

the cost of entry is extremely high unless you can differentiate (boost mobile)

successful new phone companies are bought up by the existing phone companies, so most consumers will never see the benefits of the regional or niche companies

I applaud them for at least checking to make sure things are on the up and up.

Here's a thought...although text messaging has become fairly commonplace, it is a service that is not at all necessary to get buy in life. it is not like the cost of milk has tripled-we are talking about something that frankly is superflous in life. If people don't like it, then don't use it-why is that so hard?

@Colage:

The thing is though that a Latte didn't cost $1.33 3 years ago. I'm sure the price has gone up, but not by 3x in 3 years.

I do believe the point of this Congressman's inquiry is to find out if there is reason to believe price-fixing is going on. If that were the case then the scrutiny of this initial inquiry would have the effect of causing the telecom players to perhaps start being competitive to avoid a deeper look.

I would be shocked if the fixing in this case were overt. I expect that the claims will come in as price leadership, additional capacity due to increasing demand - never because we knew we could get away with it.

Additionally some of the heaviest text users are kids/young adults who don't get to choose a plan, they get stuck on the plan that their parents picked. They can't afford to break their contracts/buy a new phone to chase lower rates on their preferred features even if there were a company willing to compete on price. Of course companies realize that mobile phones are sticky and choose to maximize revenue from current customers instead of maximizing market share. Sprint is trying really hard to compete on price, but when you're that far behind the 8-ball there is only so far you can drop prices and still service you obligations.

Mr. Kohl should sponsor legislation to force companies to be phone agnostic and to remove contracts. Commoditizing the mobile phones will force the companies to compete on *gasp* service. Instead of competing via whose lawyers are best.

At the same time that the carriers were increasing their instant messaging prices, they were also reducing the prices of their other programs. It appears that they have concluded that consumers care more about the monthly price than they do about the text messaging fees. It could also be that the people who most use text messaging (often younger people) are not particularly sensitive to text messaging pricing.

Unfortunately, this sort of meddling has become far too common for our government.

@Diet-Orange-Soda: You're right. No reason for it. I suggest you don't do it.

It's to offset the rising price of oil that you choose to do nothing about. Sure you have hearings and meetings... but to what end? Nothing, as usual. Therefore, we choose to raise prices on texting, because what's going to happen to us? Sure, we'll have hearings and meetings, but nothing will happen, as usual.

Golf game still at 2PM, tomorrow?

Regards,
-Insert Wireless Service Provider CEO here-

My texting costs me $0. I dont care how much it costs others.

Call me crazy (not fully crazy, just going crazy so my price is half off), but does the US Congress really have nothing better to do?

But you it's really silly these days to not just get an all in unlimited plan or at least an unlimited messaging package. I pay $10 month for unlimited messaging, seems like a fair deal to me considering how much I text.

I cannot at all understand its popularity with the public.

Other than investigating whether or not there was price-fixing behavior happening, the government should stay out of this.

Better yet, just block text messages on your phone like I do. You want to talk to me, call me.

What I've noticed is that people believe they always need to be connected to each other either through email, text, or calls. This belief seems to be reinforced by marketing and the phone companies themselves. Until people are willing to slow down this will just get worse.

Why I know this, I dunno...

@Colage:
Oh thank God there is someone else here who I can agree with.

As a matter of comparison, I used my phone's (Razr) mobile browser to access m.GMail.com and read one email. Since I'm not on a data plan, it costs me $.01 per KB transferred. I did nothing else on the browser and it logged ~88KB transferred, costing $.88.

I have no point to this...just wanted to see how it stacks up, penny-for-penny, as it were.

@Bladefist: They'll probably respond with laughter or silence.

The thing is, that like a latte, text messaging, like cellphones in general are a luxury. You don't need to text people. For that matter, you don't need to be able to call people when you're at Target. If you want an emergency phone, that's fine - you can get a prepaid one dirt cheap.

This whole argument is just ridiculous. I hope tomorrow we can get Congress to investigate something equally worthwhile, like how magazines have ads and yet still charge subscription fees.

Who cares how much it costs?? If it's too much for you, DON"T USE IT!! It's not a necessity and I hate to see the government get more involved in a private industry.

@twophrasebark: spot on.

As if this is going to matter really. Someone will get paid off and this will be swept under the rug until some other state official wants to come milk some more lobbyist money outta the telecoms.
I'm feeling way negative today.

I paid a £20 one off payment about 8 years ago, which gave me 5 free texts per day, for LIFE. So far, if I used all those texts, they've cost me 1/1000th of a penny each. And I'll keep getting them for as long as Orange exists. I don't think there's a plan in the UK that doesn't include texts, and many are unlimited.

I'm just annoyed that AT&T has 3 plans:

$5 for 200 message
$15 for 1500
20 for unlimited.

I always go over 200 by quite a bit but never over 500. All I want is 500 messages for about $10 a month becasue I can not justify spending $15 and never coming close.

@Bladefist: Good for you.

I miss the days of it only costing .02 (dollars, not cents Mr./Mrs. Verizon rep) to receive a message so you didn't have to pay for it when someone with an unlimited plan decided to start texting you.

I just don't use them. Now, when text spam starts getting to be a problem there *should* be some way to get cheap/free incoming texts but still overpay for sending one.

Um, Capitalism 101? Companies will charge what the market will bear (even if the market b!tches and moans about it)?

I'm not saying that $.20 per isn't exhorbitant. I'm just saying that it's also not like there's no way around it.

hell yeah herb kohl! finally doing something after 100 years in office. and i like it!

they didn't tell us they were raising it the last time. our contract says 10cents, they told us they were raising it to 15, and then it magically became 20 one day. just biding time until the contract ends, then no more at&t!

Oh, what, we already deregulated the fuck out of this industry and prices keep going up?

Oh.

Because technology is much better and the microchip is much smaller it takes more time and energy for the phone to "find" the text inside the tiny little chip. And since the little hamsters inside the phone have to run harder inside the phone, it costs more to feed them to keep up with their metabolism. That is how they can justify higher charges.

Oh, and if your interested, I got a killer mortgage rate on financing a big red bridge in San Francisco, if your looking for a good long term investment.

On the bright side:

I will say that the ever increasing text messaging fees increases allowed me to get out of a contract with Verizon for " Material Advese Affect " ( Thank you Consumerist ! )

I have that unlimited everything plan. It's nice to not have to worry.

I would respond to senator with "Because."

Um, because people are willing to pay it? Duh.

Text messaging is a cash cow. It is what makes cheaper voice plans & free nights and weekends possible.

If people start to text significantly less, than the price will go down.

Only in the United States, making voice calls are actually cheaper than texting in some cases. (In my case, it is relatively cheaper to call than to text!)

---

This is probably a drafted answer by the cell phone companies filed in a "Do Not Send to Congressmen" box:

(Note: Please take it in part seriousness and part jest.)

Dear Senator Kohl and members of the Congress,

We are raising text messaging prices because we can. We're a tight knit group here in our industry and all thanks to you, we're getting even cozier. We also know that all you finger-sucking bunch can't do a thing about it, especially if you care about funding and re-election. Some of you are too lazy to bothered about doing anything anyway.

So, if y'all care about next year, we suggest that you drop this and do whatever we say.

true.... 20cents/txt message if u dont have a plan or go over is outrageous...

but then how would AT&T pay their CEO millions a year?

Can someone explain to me why I can have 750 minutes a month to talk for 39.99 and yet, text, which I would imagine uses less bandwidth that a phone call costs 15 cents per text ?

This is why I turned text off on our phones. I got tired of paying for text from friends saying " Whats up? " and having to pay for it.

It costs 4.4 times more per byte to send a text message than it does to send/receive data from the Hubble telescope. Justify that!

[thelede.blogs.nytimes.com]