The “more bars in more places” mobile network operator has summarily increased the cost of text messaging from $0.15 to $0.20 for out of bundle text messages.
Why? Because they can. Nobody cares. Americans don’t care. Individual Americans — some who have been emailing this site — certainly care, but broadly speaking, strange as it may seem, no one can be bothered to protest. I still find it intensely annoying.
This is I’m sure because most people are either on an unlimited plan or they’ve got their texting well and truly controlled. If you’re stupid enough to pay $0.15, the current absolutely outrageous price for texting out of bundle, one imagines you’ll be eminently content to pay $0.20.
The good news is that the more mobile operators increase their prices, the more premium services like AskByText at $0.99 look really good value.
If you’re a heavy user, AT&T’s unlimited-everything plan looks a rather good deal:
$134/month and it’s all included. Love it. Or just get $99 for unlimited everything from Helio if you’re ok with CDMA.
Got the original gubbings for this via Engadget.
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When carriers realize that SMS usage is a driver of growth in the mobile communications industry and is the first step to consumer understanding of the multi-faceted uses of mobile phones then the carriers will see a rapid uptake of their OTHER services, like the mobile web.
This is not accomplished by raising rates on SMS. This is actually counter productive to their goals, like increasing ARPU by having users sign up for their data packages.
Go figure, carriers?