Simply can't understand how you could be charged for incoming SMS. That is just perverse. Who would get a phone like that??
I wish one of those companies would just stand up above the rest and not suck. They are all so shitty. All the new phones in america suck. I'm still using a super old nokia and I was going to upgrade it, but all the phones at the store were all pathetic. At least congress made it easy to switch to a new carrier because of the number-portability bill.
I'm with verizon right now, who generally have a great network, but I would drop them in a heartbeat if something better came around. However i hear nothing but bad things about AT&T (nee Cingular) and sprint usually doesn't have the best coverage, although I have thought of switching to them because they have some great plans. T-Mobile isn't any better either.
Move to Europe.
On a more serious note - I think this is probably one of the main reasons that the Scandinavian countries are ahead in the mobile game. You can get cheap plans that include an unlimited amount of text messaging, most people don't have landlines anymore, and quite a few use their phone as their only means of hooking up to the Internet - you can get 7 mbit and free traffic pretty cheaply with your 3G phone.
I noticed a few of the startups mentioned here that did wireless stuff that we've seen years ago over here - there has even been a story of a startup that did a wireless location service, and was touted as super-smart and innovative. A friend of mine did the exact same thing over here back in 2003.
Unfortunately we have a small home market, a broken investment system for startups, and are terrible at selling ourselves. So we don't do well on the international scene.
I'm from Scandinavia and this isn't really the case. Data is more expensive in Sweden than in US. The US market has done a lot to make it easy for people to use data on their mobile phones. Sure, we have advanced phones in Sweden but that's about it.
Some countries with cheap data-plans for mobile: http://gammalife.blogspot.com/2008/02/pricing.html
Companies like Swaggle, 3Jam, Twitter, and Dodgeball all get full cooperation from carriers because they encourage MORE received texts. If carriers didn't charge for received texts, these services would be creating situations where the users save and the carriers lose. (At least at first. You can probably successfully argue that Dodgeball and Twitter eventually encourage the users to send more texts once they're naturalized.)
But as it stands, cheap SMS integration into web apps is a boon for startups with a mobile twist.
(That being said, carriers are still running a cartel in the US...)
They opened it up to the public after the iPhone came out. so you can use this address to signup: savings@sprintemi.com
I pay about $34 a month for 500 anytime, unlimited n/w (nights start at 7pm), unlimited data, and unlimited texts.
Unlimited texts aren't part of the plan, but if you ask for it after signing up they should give it to you.
I've never had a problem with Sprint's network.
Sim-cards is a great invention. Compare with computers, imagine if you bought a computer from Dell that would only be allowed to run on the Dell-DSL network and only allowed to run Dell-approved software. Not a great deal
E.g. the call cost is made up of core+wireless component. The caller pays for the core cost regardless of number type called (excepting premium and free). The person who causes the extra expense of the wireless hop has to pay for it.