Using SMS is like paying for email, email that isn't very good...
blog.mycannonball.com
blog.mycannonball.com
Paying to send 160 chars of text is a little annoying, but at $0.01/text it's hard to complain too much about.
That depends entirely on where you are and whether or not you have a texting plan.
For example, I have very little use for texting, and simply cannot justify the cost of a monthly texting plan for my (non-smart) phone. Since I'm in Canada, and our telecom companies are all complete bastards up here, I pay $0.15 to send a text. I also pay $0.15 to receive a text. It's ridiculous.
* Why does it cost $0.15/text to send/receive? 1000 texts at that rate is $150.00.
* Why do they charge for incoming text and then make it so hard to block incoming texts?
* There are perverse incentives. The cell carriers have no incentive to block/deter SMS spam on their network. Actually, they are incentivized to allow it.
* In the US, on some carriers, it's ~ $0.25 - $0.35 to send/receive texts without a plan, whereas unlimited is usually ~$10/month.
* The cell carriers want people to pay a standard rate because it makes their accounting calculations/projections easier.
* The cell carriers want people to pay a standard rate because they probably would pay less on a pay-as-you-go plan. (Though if people started taxing the SMS system, they would quickly reverse course and start talking about people being 'SMS hogs.')
If you rent a single DVD it will cost more per film than if you get an unlimited monthly plan. If you buy a single song on iTunes it will cost more per song than if you buy the album. If you rent a car for the weekend it will cost more per day than if you buy the car and use it all the time.
The main cost is the infrastructure, hence why the more you buy, the cheaper it can go.
My parents, on Verizon, have a family plan. Due to business partners who insist on texting all the time, they have unlimited texting added to the account. $30/month, across two phones.
AT&T, as has been reported ad infinitum, is eliminating their $10 per 1000 texts per month plan. Unlimited texts, now your only option, is $20/month (I have no clue about their family plans).
Given that the FCC, FTC, and whoever spend zero time looking into this, I'd say the consumer is simply and increasingly screwed.
As I understand it, text messages started as a side effect. Someone noticed that there was spare room in the status messages flying between towers and phones, and thought, hmm, what can we do with that? (Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I recall it.)
Capitalism, dear pyre. Enough people are willing to pay it, so they do.
SMS would die quickly if something else came along that became ubiquitous overnight. Since we know that isn't going to happen, there's no point complaining about it.
Sometimes, I don't mind paying for convenience.
disclosure: I work at imo.im.
Now if there were the same cross-platform transparency between other messaging services then that'd be something really great. Sort of like what the hybrid IM clients kinda-achieved in the late 90s.
I can't really see it happening though.
- Phone's default ringtones for SMS are much more notable than the email alert. Change the defaults on phones so that it's more obvious when an email arrives and people will be more likely to use it.
- Less spam. People are generally confident that SMS messages are sent from someone they know, so they check them immediately. If email had less spam, people would be more interested when email arrives.
Fix these two things and I think there will be broader appeal to email as a replacement to SMS.
If I had to delete 50 spam sms a day using my tiny mobile phone buttons....
I only use the google voice app when I have little service but still on wifi.
The best way to exchange credit card information safely is when every step is certified to be PCI compliant which has very strict rules for how credit card information is transmitted, handled, and stored and who can handle them.
I would sooner speak my credit card number to a trusted vendor's call center employee than SMS it anywhere. I have yet to give out my credit card over the phone and I'd never email it.