http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN0940513520080909

The chair of the U.S. Senate's antitrust panel sent a letter to four top cell phone companies on Tuesday asking them to explain what he said were a doubling in the price of text messages in three years.

Sen. Herb Kohl, chair of the antitrust subcommittee and a Wisconsin Democrat, wrote to Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc (T.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Sprint Nextel Corp (S.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and T-Mobile TMOG.UL to express concern about "what appear to be sharply rising rates your companies have charged to wireless phone customers for text messaging."

It's about time. There was a funny writeup somewhere recently about how SMS messages are, byte for byte, literally 4x more expensive than the data transferred from Hubble telescope.

I hope some positive development (for consumers) comes of this!

Somehow I feel cheated by having to pay $5 for just 200 messages a month.

or $20 for unlimited. Granted I make very good use of my messages, I send a few thousand a month b/c I'm a nerd.

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN0940513520080909



It's about time. There was a funny writeup somewhere recently about how SMS messages are, byte for byte, literally 4x more expensive than the data transferred from Hubble telescope.

simple answer...to make more money..god forbid..

Answer to what?

Like the exorbant montly charges isn't enough?

so what is a nonexorbant cost? Since clearly you have done in depth cost analysis, factoring in expansion of towers, buying more bandwidth, eexpanding services, oh yeah my pay check.

just curious...what would be a good price for say 450 minutes with unlimited roaming and long distance, 5000 night and week end minutes, free calling to any AT&T customer.

Since 39.99 is crazy talk.

What, is SMS rocket science (http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/12/sms-data-rate-is-4x.html) or something?

Given that you can purchase unlimited data plans for around $20 per month and the data transfer there dwarves SMS messages by a vast number ... but that doesn't include texts is kinda a monopoly gimick by our cellular carriers. We can get upset at OPEC for doing the same thing, our cellular providers shouldn't get away with it.

I'm sure our European counterparts here can explain how they only get charged for texts sent, where in the US we get charged for every unsolicited spam message we receive.

You asked Filiden for statistics, though you don't have them either. I'm fairly sure Congress will get the data then act accordingly, for the betterment of all US citizens.

Is this just a calling out, or does Congress actually plan to take action? Can they take action? I would think it's just a free market issue - people are willing to pay for a service. Not that I disagree in the slightest that they're overcharging, I've thought that for a long time.

Anytime an infrastructure like that is involved, it's likely to fall under anti-trust jurisdiction. The spectrum licensing creates an almost impenetrable barrier to entry for competition.

What, is SMS rocket science (http://www.boingboing.net/2008/05/12/sms-data-rate-is-4x.html) or something?

There is some variables there that arent being mentioned. The Hubble messages have probably been streamlined with custom software, while SMS has to follow a particular format so it works world wide. There is articles out ther saying the SMS isnt efficient as it could be.

Also, The Hubble doesnt do the same volume of data transfer as the Hubble does i would venture to say speaking there is millions of text sent a day.

So besides SMS, i again ask what is the proper price since the general concensus is cell phones are too expensive rate plan wise.

That's silly Grey.

Even in the late 90's, SMS messages were compressed as much as any other data, between the towers. SMS is an old, inefficient protocol, but it can be compressed just as easily as anything. Actually easier, because it's so simple.

Millions a day? Do you realize that a million SMS messages of maximum size would still only amount to about two CDs downloaded off iTunes? You could transfer that across AT&T's backbone in an insignificant fraction of a second.

In about one minute, you can download more a million full SMS messages worth of data via EDGE. So, AT&T can handle all these millions of unlimited EDGE and 3G data users, using orders of magnitude more data than SMS, but SMS is just crushing their infrastructure?

Please.

Excellent points you've brought up Greystone. I can see you are well versed and highly knowledgeable in the arena of cellular services. I can't wait to see how this educated discussion plays out.

Potentially good point San. But alas, SMS is on a different router for lack of better term. EDGE/UMTS is for data only, and doesnt apply to SMS, it kinda runs on the old GPRS system that is SLOW as hell.

The large backbone of AT&T you mentioned, also costs money to keep up running and expand, but clearly we dont want to have to pay for that as a consumer..

People here say that the monthly bill is WAY to high. Odd thing here, if you compare plans 5 years ago to now, they are roughly the same, but now you get unlimited nights and weeked, no long distance charges, no roaming charges, no charges if its a in network calling. I started selling phones when N&W was a premium, in network was a premium, local plans gave you an area typically the size of your state and if you called outside of that you got charged, and god forbid you took your phone out of the calling area roaming charges would own you. These are all things AT&T foots the bill for they didnt before.


Have you compared the price of a cell phone for a single line with no long distance charges, is portable, has internet, text and personal information management capabilites to say your home phone. Who is the over priced one then.

My line that never gets used in my house i paid $49 a month for and sitll had to pay a per minute charge for long distance after doing the econiomics i canceled the land line.

Edit: To add even if text worked on EDGE, the worlds networks are updating to UMTS/HSDPA which has a price they have to get some how. EDGE will be dead in 3ish years.

In the 5 years or so that I've had a cell phone capable of sending and receiving text messages, the price has increased from 5 cents to send/2 cents to receive to 20 cents to send/20 cents to receive, if I remember right.

Have you compared the price of a cell phone for a single line with no long distance charges, is portable, has internet, text and personal information management capabilites to say your home phone. Who is the over priced one then.
.
I dunno, the 25 a month I pay for my land line with unlimited long distance throughout the US and Canada seems like a pretty fucking good deal to me...

I dunno, the 25 a month I pay for my land line with unlimited long distance throughout the US and Canada seems like a pretty fucking good deal to me...

/nod
Touché

SMS is txt no? How large is txt compared to me viewing this website?

Grey, also in Europe SMS are free to receive, and I know for a fact most cellular companies allow you to log into their website and send SMS messages for free to their subscribers. If a website can translate info into a SMS, I don't see why it wouldn't work as standard "data" which is completely unlimited for my $35 / month with Verizon. Yet in Europe, it works that way there because all of the various companies from different countries are so close together and competitive. That ... is the free market. When all of our carriers increase their rates together, it smells like OPEC.

Only things that have gone up are what they call pay per use charges. The charges if you dont have a package. The package prices have actually gone down.

A year ago a family of 5 to have unlimited messaging would of been $20 per line or $100, now its $30 for the entire plan.

Unlimited data on a non-pda was $20, now its $15, on a pda it went form $0 to $30, the big bad cell phone carriers are lowering the prices of things, but not the things that arent package related.

Even rate plans for minutes. We had 4 plans above 1350 minutes, now after 1350 you go to $99 unlimited plan. It saved high end users typically over $100

As far as Europe, my first look at Orange's rate plans which if i understand correctly is a HUGE company. For $44 you get 400minutes with unlimited Text. Comparing the similar AT&T pricing the same plan would be $60, but you get a lot more freebies, well hehe i guess in this case arent free.

Yes Euro is cheaper also due to the fact their infrastructure has a head start on the US by about 10 years. We for some retarded reason decided to do TDMA/CDMA before a few carriers got smart and went to GSM. AT&T has to build its entire infrastructure by itself for hte most part. T-Mobile is the only other major GSM carrier and they in general rent out tower space from AT&T. So you have to factor in building a network that is roughly the size of Europe is all on one carrier.

Grey, I get about a dozen SMS messages a month from AT&T.

You're telling us their SMS infrastructure is old and overloaded, but they don't seem to think it is. It probably wouldn't take a week's worth of development to have the messaging system automatically reroute those system messages through email for people with decent phones.

If SMS were truly so expensive for them to handle, they would have done that years ago.

I never said it was overloaded. The SMS format is old.

Email uses more data than SMS does just in headers, so how would that be a viable solution?

All I am suggestion is that the cost does have some justificaiton based on previous facts i have given. They are lowering prices else where to make the service a better deal for consumers.

In the end IMO its laughable, if you do more than 25 SMS in a month, there is a $5 package to get 200. So the rates rose....if you using 3 text a month is the extra 15cents really worth congress expending time on it?

I never said it was overloaded. The SMS format is old.

You previously dismissed the comparison of AT&T's data network delivering a million SMS messages per minute, because the SMS infrastructure is old. The only possible logical explanation of that would be if the SMS infrastructure was old and overloaded, with a scarcity of capacity.

It just being old is meaningless. Away from the planned obsolescence land of the consumer electronics you're selling, old doesn't equal incapable.

Just look at the last time the air traffic control system was upgraded. Or, ask Malse about how old the software/computers running the entire power grid are.

Both of those systems have coped with drastically increasing demand without constantly increasing prices based on any sort of infrastructure issues. Yet, cell phone companies are somehow so inept that they can't even compete with the inefficiencies of the power industry?

No one in their right mind believes that, of course. That's why even one of the slackest Congresses in history is investigating what's going on here.

This is why AT&T knows better than to make a fuss:

http://www.freepress.net/files/att_history.jpg

i laugh you pick particular parts of my argument and compeltely ignore the 100% valid ones.

Also the jpg you posted...duh...Colbert did a peice on it when cingular and at&t merged.

To add, Verizon and Sprint have been sued over their sms charges, while AT&T isnt in as much trouble.

But i only speak for the company i work for :P

Package prices are a distraction from the underlying issue. Saying that a monthly unlimited plan is a better deal than the per-message charges is predicated on the per-message charges being reasonable to begin with.

Of course I'm going to ignore that dog and pony show. It's a cheap psych 101 trick.

So I will go back to my initial argument...what is reasonable.

Cheaper than the cost of transferring data from an orbiting telescope would be a nice start.

which i beleive is comparing apples to pizza.

Years ago, SMS messages were free. Then, they were 2 cents. Then 5. 10, 15, 20.

You say that the infrastructure is old, but not overloaded. So, where is the justification for the drastic increase in the charges? Most anyone unbiased can see that it's simply a case of the carriers feeling out the market and trying to charge as much as they can.

That would be well and good if they didn't have a monopoly on the frequencies. Unfortunately, they do. Hence the anti-trust nature of this probe.

Funny you bring up that it used to be free but now it's going up. Those who think it's reasonable... I wonder do you own a GPS? Do you like your free service? How would you feel if someone started charging? Why is the GPS service free but SMS text not?

gps is $10 a month for AT&T unless you have an iphone, then its built into the $30 package.

SMS may have been free (not that i actually recall), but Mobile to Mobile used to cost, night and weekends cost...

I just dont understand why something so small is being investigated by congress, and in my market so few people actually use.

As far as the bandwidth comment. THat is the governments own damn fault. They made the recent 700 spectrum open auction. So of course the bigger companies are going to take it. IMO that is a case of sleep in the bed you made.

Grey, you are totally missing the point and getting so defensive its blocking out rationality.

The government gave these companies the right to do the things they do due to the nature of the infrastructure. Now, its come to light these companies might be abusing their pseudo-monopoly and they are investigating. As Sanchek pointed out, a 300% increase in the cost of SMS messaging without justification and without the ability of other companies to come in to compete sounds like it is breaking anti-trust laws.

I appreciate you work for a company that sells cell phones and would have some insight, but I sincerely doubt the CEOs of the major cell phone providers have sat down to chat with you about why they charge what they charge for these services like they will with Congress. If they aren't doing anything wrong, Congress won't need to interfere. If they are, at my expense, I want my government looking out for me.

gps is $10 a month for AT&T unless you have an iphone, then its built into the $30 package.

GPS is a hardware feature. Do you think those are AT&T GPS satellites the handsets use?

Maybe you need the AT&T app if you have a bad phone. On mine, I just use the Google Maps application, which is better than the Navigator deal from AT&T and free.

At this rate, are they going to start charging us a monthly fee to have color displays? Trying to tack on a monthly fee for something built into the hardware of the phone, is just absurd.

I'm glad you reminded me of that!

SMS may have been free (not that i actually recall), but Mobile to Mobile used to cost, night and weekends cost...

Bellsouth's messaging was free for a long time, all the way through to when it was AT&T wireless the first time. Powertel offered free SMS back then too.

I used both to receive emails, until they started charging for SMS.

I just dont understand why something so small is being investigated by congress, and in my market so few people actually use.

Again, because it's an anti-trust issue. If this were Papa John's charging too much for extra toppings, we wouldn't be hearing about it.

As far as the bandwidth comment. THat is the governments own damn fault. They made the recent 700 spectrum open auction. So of course the bigger companies are going to take it. IMO that is a case of sleep in the bed you made.

That's beside the point. The fact remains that there is a legislated barrier to entry, no matter who that one (relatively low bandwidth) spectrum went to.

If Papa John's starts charging $100/pizza, you can open a new pizza store and sell them for $80. You cannot start up a competing SMS service, hence the carriers can't just screw around with the prices and see how high they can raise them.

Maybe you need the AT&T app if you have a bad phone. On mine, I just use the Google Maps application, which is better than the Navigator deal from AT&T and free.


In what ways, this comment makes me think you are not properly versed in it. GPS used for E-911 is not the same GPS for the purposes of Navigator. Not every phone can use navigator. Google maps will work for any phone but its not as accurate and it doesnt do the other features. Granted i dont have to pay for it, but i use the navigators other features constantly.

GPS on your phone may cost but I'm talking about walking into Best Buy and buying a TomTom or some such. There is no monthly fee for those devices, so WTF do cell companies think they can charge for it? B/C they charge for everything else why not that too!!!!!!!!!! :)

I use google maps and love it! I haven't found a feature yet it didn't have that I needed.

The Google Maps app works great with the GPS in the phone. The Navigator app that they imply is necessary to use "GPS" is clunky, slower, and they want to charge for it too? Riiiiight.

Just more of the AT&T douchebaggery, trying to sell people on a service as if they need it in order to use their GPS hardware.

As far as accuracy, Google Maps shows me standing in my driveway with a correct vector indicator for the direction I walked to get there. What more accuracy could anyone possibly need?

As far as accuracy, Google Maps shows me standing in my driveway with a correct vector indicator for the direction I walked to get there. What more accuracy could anyone possibly need?

Google Maps is crazy accurate. Watching it blip me down the road at 70mph, staying synced with crossroads, all for free gives me a warm fuzzy.

SAn as long as i known you, you have bitched about AT&T yet you keep paying them.

Have you actually used Navigator? Since i know havent upgraded your phone, I can safely assume you have never used it. You are paying for the "other" services. It will find cheapest gas (this funciton i use weekly), plan multiple routes, find buisness, and a few other perks. Google maps wont reroute based on construction, or heavy traffic.

As far as accuracy, let my clerify im my rural ass county, there is a difference.

I used the Navigator free trial, before I found the Google maps app.

Traffic? Cheapest gas? Closest Starbucks? Google maps does all of that, and includes all of the Google online information that AT&T's proprietary app can't come close to matching.

I can't imagine why you would use the Navigator, even getting it for free. You must be comparing it to the web based version of Google maps and haven't used the actual Google maps phone application.

As for rural GPS reception, I think you may have misunderstood how GPS works. Hint: it's accuracy has nothing to do with cell towers.

i got the www.google.com/gmm application. I give it to customers all the time.

umm aka triangulation based off satellites the more sats the more accurate :). I have a WM6 phone and personally for free I like live search which sounds suprisingly similar to GM and also is free. I never used cingulars since I knew there were free apps out there just as powerful or more.

Grey, you seriously have no idea what you're going on about. The old-school pager infrastructure that SMS was original built with is essentially non-existent in the civilized world and the only reason they charge money for it is because people are dumb enough to pay it (I blame women). Modern packet radio makes SMS traffic somewhere down below framing error correction on the capacity planning crib sheet.

Re GPS, you are also off base as there are two distinct and totally unrelated things being discussed. The old E911 or whatever it was called stuff was based on cell-tower triangulation and dropoff distance estimates, most modern phones have real GPS receivers that listen to satellite broadcasts which are in no way related to cell phones. Since that works about four orders of magnitude better, they also use it for the emergency location stuff.

Whether or not a specific piece of software can use a GPS receiver in your phone is dictated by firmware, usually tweaked by the providers to extort more money out of you. (my BB 8330 receiver is disabled unless I cough up another $10/mo to Verizon, for example, but still reports my location in the event of an E911 check).

I also must concur that Google Maps is way better than the Navigator, but that may be another verizon sucks thing.

I blame kids for txt! Why you blame women? :( I don't like to pay for txt either, but ok I do :( damn it.

Because 19 out of 20 text messages I receive are from women.

You're just a pimp! I get ~40 texts a day, mostly from men or my girlfriend :(

I just ignore the (more often than not) inane people who send me text messages, until they stop or learn to send an email instead.

Not sure if I receive more texts from men or women, since I never bother to check texts and have never sent one. I just use the phone to call folks.

Fun being an old fogey some times. :p

Texts are so much faster though, if you need to send a tiny amount of data fast. They don't need to download headers, then download body, then wait to download that 200kb advertisement from best buy or whatever to download first - they just send. My business is almost run entirely by text message since I can't talk very well mid-interview in a silent room.

Then of course, most people can't send an e-mail from their phone.

But this has gotten way off topic, let me summarize - phone companies bad, and congress is gonna kick their ass.

If email is slow for you and includes advertisements, there's a good chance that you're doing it wrong.

it's far faster for me to blip a txt than an email :(
I admit I've gotten lazy.

But Malse sounds like you're just too hot I'm sorry I txt you so much!

What in the world are you guys using for email, that it's so slow/difficult?

It takes too long to open the program to email! I'm lazy :(

That would drive me nuts. It's the same speed (instant) to do either on my BlackBerry.

lol no, I'm saying that even when I'm sitting at my desk and I need to say something to leah or someone I just txt them it's faster than opening a new window to compose the message, looking up their address, and then typing my message.

my email on my iphone is usually always open so it's pretty fast, I'm just partial to text not only b/c I'm lazy but b/c on my iphone it keeps the history in such a format that it looks like I'm IM'ing with the person, I like that allot.

But, I hate opening outlook or windows mail to compose a short message. I r verah lazy.

I can see not wanting to use Outlook to IM.

What do you use?

An IM client, of course!

Trillian on the desktop. Mainly GTalk on the BB. It integrates right into the messaging app seamlessly, so it's no different than email/SMS/BBIM/etc.

That would drive me nuts. It's the same speed (instant) to do either on my BlackBerry.

Yeah both are the same speed for me on my blackberry too (and work pays for it, so fuck the text fees, it's faster for me to text my wife on my work blackberry than on my personal cell).

I need to find a good IM app for the iphone everything I've tried logs me out when I put the phone in sleep or navigate from the app. If IM worked the way I wanted it to I would most definitely use it more. Indeed this is one area the iphone is uber sucking.

http://gthing.net/the-true-price-of-sms-messages/

COSTS OF TRANSFERING 2,560 MP3s:

TCP/IP: $1
TCP/SMS: $61,356,851.20
TCP/USPS: $307,072.00 (Bits written out on paper)

I got a good chuckle from the A-fee&fee bit.

Has there been anymore on this topic from Congress? I really haven't been following it but do find it important to my wallet.

I'd guess they're otherwise occupied right now.

Bah! They've already voted on it :p

A-fee&fee

i laughed evily as i collected outragous charges

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28digi.html

I need to find a good IM app for the iphone everything I've tried logs me out when I put the phone in sleep or navigate from the app. If IM worked the way I wanted it to I would most definitely use it more. Indeed this is one area the iphone is uber sucking.

I've been moving towards Gmail chat on the blackberry, no idea how that works on the iPhone but I would be curious since I plan to ditch the crappy corporate BB once my personal cell is up for a decent upgrade. We manage to pay twice as much as the average Joe with our "corporate discount," I hope someone enjoys the kickback.

Also my text spread this month has been about 200 to 1 women/men, with Sanchek coming in as the only guy (and that was technically a Blackberry Messenger so I'm only counting it for generosity and because he's my pookie <3 ). What is wrong with them!

I can't speak for others, but I have a Stone Age phone that can't do email/IM (I had a college laptop at the time I got it to use for these things on the road), and occasionally need to get ahold of someone when on the road and away from a computer and voice isn't convenient/desirable. I'm such a cheapskate that I'm unlikely to change phones before my contract expires this coming July unless it's free, but depending on how much I anticipate needing some sort of IM before then, it might be worth it financially.

Regards,
Nydia

To have a phone that doesn't have email/IM, yet still be under contract, your cell provider must put you under 10 year contracts or something...

I'm fairly convinced that Nydia is actually the last cylon that was sent back in time to the mid 90's to determine if the Earth is worth saving. However, her programming went wrong and instead she sends her coded messages onto this forum, 10 years in her future, our present.

/twitches.

AT&T is my favorite phone company. I have a raging hardon for companies that charge you money in order to pay your bill. The processing fee is the greatest invention ever conceived of. I have this vision of a bunch of execs worried that they might not be able to afford their korean houseboys one year and then Bob speaks up and says, "Why don't we make them pay...in order to pay?"

One by one their eyes light up and then they cover eachother in baking powder and have a wild old man CEO orgy.

I think.

Anyways...

I wouldn't mind all the fee's if they were the telecoms were forced by law to spend X$ amount on improving infrastructure. Let all those women and children pay in order to build me a phat pipe. Daddy wants FIOS in Wisconsin by 2012, yes he does.

I wouldn't mind all the fee's if they were the telecoms were forced by law to spend X$ amount on improving infrastructure. Let all those women and children pay in order to build me a phat pipe. Daddy wants FIOS in Wisconsin by 2012, yes he does.

Funny you mention it because some of those inexplicable taxes they add to your bill are nominally supposed, by law, to cover that, but then you get charged for them again anyway ... or they sue you when you try to do it without them, as happened in Ohio?

I hear at one point there was this thing called oversight but they probably didn't pay their convenience fee for the original back-pack cell phone with nuclear-football style headset they had (slightly newer than Nydia's) and got sent out to collections.

AT&T doesnt charge to pay the bill to my knowledge unless you come into the store and make me do it. (We have a FREE kiosk in the store that takes check, cash, credit, debit)

The taxes. 75% or so are straight up taxes. the other 25% are fees that the government charges the carrier to do buisness basically per line, and instead of paying it out of their pocket, they defer that cost to you. Florida taxes the crap out of communications, it's crazy. Average taxes on a bill here is 22% or so, with about 4$ of that being the passed along fees.

We manage to pay twice as much as the average Joe with our "corporate discount," I hope someone enjoys the kickback.

If you want i can take a look at your account, that shouldn't be the case, our business plans mirror our personal plans up to 5 lines, and they have decent rates for more than 5, and even recently added a whole new structuring system for business plans. Plus all businesses under a business agreement get at least a 8% cut off of any line that is 34.99 or higher.

As far as blackberry the Enterprise Server package is $15 more, but i am willing to bet that is BB charging the premium for the BES service. I would have to check in to it to find out.

Our corporate plan is Verizon, as I mentioned (which totally sucks), though I appreciate the offer. I'd never go with them for a personal plan on a BB , at least.

I've been moving towards Gmail chat on the blackberry, no idea how that works on the iPhone but I would be curious since I plan to ditch the crappy corporate BB once my personal cell is up for a decent upgrade. We manage to pay twice as much as the average Joe with our "corporate discount," I hope someone enjoys the kickback.

iPhones are the fail, if you do anything serious whatsoever.

The CEO where I work got an iPhone and the President got a BlackBerry Bold within a few days of each other. The iPhone is neat and pretty, but has been nothing but trouble for him (read: me). The Bold is also neat and pretty, yet works flawlessly too.

And, no lameo iTunes lockin with the BlackBerry. That is one of the worst Win32 apps ever created. I'm pretty sure it's cruel payback for how clunky Office is on the Mac.

Bold is GREAT for work purposes.

I hope congress knocks them on their ass. I'm also tired of the government giving money to cable company's to upgrade their lines only to have them pocket it and charge us more for upgrading their systems.

Grey do the corporate plans still not give discounts for iphones? I want my 26% off my plan damnit! :(

And there is nothing I have needed to do on my iphone that I couldn't do. So I disagree about functionality; I also find the apps for the iphone are cheaper and better. I do hate itunes though. For the record I have both an iphone and a BB, the BB only b/c I have to for work. The iphone by choice ;)

You pay for BB apps? For what?

Grey do the corporate plans still not give discounts for iphones? I want my 26% off my plan damnit! :(

And there is nothing I have needed to do on my iphone that I couldn't do. So I disagree about functionality; I also find the apps for the iphone are cheaper and better. I do hate itunes though. For the record I have both an iphone and a BB, the BB only b/c I have to for work. The iphone by choice ;)

Yeah when the 3g came out, you CAN get discount for that. but not the original.

BB Apps: Document Station, PDF Pro, games..

sorry you've confused.... I can or cannot get the corp discount on my 3g?

I have 5 pages of apps on my iphone, I have paid for 2 apps the rest are free and are apps I use them all frequently (granted I have allot of games and goofy stuff but still). The 2 I bought, VNC so I can remote desktop to my work PC... the pay version gave me a "ctrl alt del" key so I could log into my PC and do other things the lite version did not have and flutter so I can send SMS messages... sorta. Definitely my biggest beef with iphone I can't text photos easily and I have no voice dialing. When this happens I will be complete.

So back on topic... any word on Congress calling out the carriers? It's obscene to pay $30 a month for unlimited text on my family plan. :(

ys you can get your discount on a 3g iphone, pm me your email address and i will send you the form when i am at work enxt

So back on topic... any word on Congress calling out the carriers? It's obscene to pay $30 a month for unlimited text on my family plan. :(

The congress thing is about the pay per use charges if i am not mistaken not the packages. If anything the 30 family package would be seen as them making it cheaper, as it used to be 20 a line for unlimited text and now 30 covers up to 5 lines.

I don't like the dominance of AT&T, but as our only viable SIM-card/UMTS-based 3G network, I have no choice but to use them. As mentioned in Greystone's most recent post, I have the unlimited SMS plan for $30.00 (inclusive up to five phones). I bought my iPhone 3G in Hong Kong because Hong Kong's laws prohibit tying phone service to a cell phone.

The way I see it, phone companies are free to charge whatever they like as long as there is healthy competition and consumers are willing and able to pay the current market price for short messages. While selection of cell phone vendors are quite limited, it's not exactly a trust (probably more like a trade cartel).

I understand your sentiment, Sanchek, but from a businessman's perspective (and a Libertarian), I don't advocate for any business pricing structure regulation unless absolutely required. The US cell phone companies have realized they can profit from short messages. They've estimated that because a lot of consumers are willing to pay the exorbitant fees for short messages, they can offset the loss in margins in the voice plans (and thereby offer competitive voice plans).

I rather have more voice minutes than have them reduce the number of minutes (or increase the price of the voice plan) to make up for the loss in profit from short messages. Consumers have shown that they are able and willing to pay the current market price for short messages.

Europe, on the other hand, has voice packages with fewer minutes but unlimited short messages. One can only presume that Europe prefers to send a short message over calling. I still prefer to call people when I can since I'm old-fashioned like that.

There has never been healthy competition in the telephone industry. Or the data network systems, for that matter. Similar effectively infrastructural services are highly regulated and have to clear their end-user rates with public utility commissions.

The highest ideal of a libertarian government is to protect its constituency from forces, like natural monopolies, that will endlessly try to exploit them (itself included).

Yeah, that's the problem with a Laissez-faire attitude toward these guys. They're a protected monopoly, not a free market player.

The dominance of AT&T is mostly due to the fact they are smart enough to have adopted the world standard of GSM as opposed to some constant reinvention of the wheel that is CDMA/TDMA.

It baffles me that Orange/T-Mobile isn't bigger in the US, given their presence in Europe.

The dominance of AT&T is mostly due to the fact they are smart enough to have adopted the world standard of GSM as opposed to some constant reinvention of the wheel that is CDMA/TDMA.

It baffles me that Orange/T-Mobile isn't bigger in the US, given their presence in Europe.

Doesn't baffle me. The only people that I know that use T-Mobile (best friend and his wife) get pretty shitty service. It's not rare for them to get text messages 4 days after I send them. It's not rare for them to get voice mails days after they are left. It's also not rare for them to lose a connection when they aren't moving. They are far from happy with their service, they just stick with it because of lame-o contracts.

Doesn't baffle me. The only people that I know that use T-Mobile (best friend and his wife) get pretty shitty service. It's not rare for them to get text messages 4 days after I send them. It's not rare for them to get voice mails days after they are left. It's also not rare for them to lose a connection when they aren't moving. They are far from happy with their service, they just stick with it because of lame-o contracts.


yeah but they have the resources to expand their network. Thats the reason verizon, sprint, at&t get away with so much their network is so huge taht many carriers rent bandwidth from them. t-mobile has the cash to do so.

pm sent btw! :D

you may not need to send me the form... I accessed att.com from here and it sent me to a corp site I entered my info and it says

Congratulations — the certification process is complete!

To the extent you are eligible to receive a service discount, you should start receiving the discount within one (1) to two (2) billing cycles

You will receive a confirmation of your certification request via email at: dfdklafjkdsalfdsjafdsf@sdfkdlsfjda.cldfkdalfdsja

Thank you for choosing AT&T.


so if this is it nevermind but ty!!! at least now I know I can get one :D

Doesn't baffle me. The only people that I know that use T-Mobile (best friend and his wife) get pretty shitty service. It's not rare for them to get text messages 4 days after I send them. It's not rare for them to get voice mails days after they are left. It's also not rare for them to lose a connection when they aren't moving. They are far from happy with their service, they just stick with it because of lame-o contracts.

I have been with T-Mobile for about 5 or 6 years now, but as I have pointed out before I have never come close to using half of my monthly minutes. I only have a cell phone in case of emergencies , either at work or home.

I do want to point out that I have never had a problem with service, other than needing to upgrade an antique phone when they changed their towers to increased bandwidth, and my old phone could not handle it. I never had a problem when I drove to Detroit, either with calls back to Minnesota or the Michigan area.

/shrug

But then, my limited use also might mean I have no idea what to be looking for to complain about, heh.

pm sent btw! :D

you may not need to send me the form... I accessed att.com from here and it sent me to a corp site I entered my info and it says

Congratulations — the certification process is complete!

To the extent you are eligible to receive a service discount, you should start receiving the discount within one (1) to two (2) billing cycles

You will receive a confirmation of your certification request via email at: dfdklafjkdsalfdsjafdsf@sdfkdlsfjda.cldfkdalfdsja

Thank you for choosing AT&T.


so if this is it nevermind but ty!!! at least now I know I can get one :D

yeah you are good. Worst case if you wanna double check pm me your phone number and i can check it. then i can text you and cellphone stalk you muchhahahahahah

don't listen to Greystone, it's a trap for AT&T to charge you for texts!

thats fucked up....hahaha