The Manila Standard Today reports that the Philippines Government is mulling the concept of demanding operators provide texting for free. Heh. Cat, Pigeons.
Have a read:
ISLAND—The government wants cell phone companies, which move 1.39 billion messages a day, to offer texting for free.
“We are studying this now,†Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza said. “Carriers should only charge for voice calls because in their franchise, they only pay for voice services. Text messaging is not really considered a [basic] service and should be free.â€
Mendoza said the department expected to file a petition before the National Telecommunications Commission to remove the charges on text, but acknowledged the move would be controversial and difficult to carry out.
Charging for text messages was really set up as a control device or limiter for people. When text was free waaaay back when, late 90's I guess, the networked was swamped with text messages. One message took almost a whole day to be sent and I vaguely remember they were having difficulties with calls because of it also. So making it free would be a really really bad idea for a country where virtually everyone has a cellphone. Besides unlimited texts just makes people spend their day on the damn things.
Charging for text messages was really set up as a control device or limiter for people. When text was free waaaay back when, late 90's I guess, the networked was swamped with text messages. One message took almost a whole day to be sent and I vaguely remember they were having difficulties with calls because of it also. So making it free would be a really really bad idea for a country where virtually everyone has a cellphone. Besides unlimited texts just makes people spend their day on the damn things.