Why are SMS messages so expensive?
Why are SMS messages so expensive?
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?
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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.
I know you meant collusion, but in case anyone else didn't, it's not collision.
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.
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).