Hacker News Reader

Comment by shawabawa3 | Hacker News Reader

You pay for incoming SMS? How does that even work?

Standard American mobile billing is to bill both parties, both caller and callee, for both voice and SMS. Contrary to the European practice where caller/sender pays everything.

Mostly it's a downside for Americans, but one plus is that it means the caller's fee doesn't vary based on callee: unlike in some European countries (or Skype), calling a landline vs. a mobile phone doesn't charge the caller different rates.

> Standard American mobile billing is to bill both parties

That's the most bizarre thing I've heard in weeks. Honestly, I'm still laughing. BOTH for SMS and voice?!! God, that's just crazy. No wonder you Americans hate telco companies so much. And I though 0.25 cents (only for outgoing SMSs) that we pay here is absurd.

For voice I actually like it somewhat better: I hate the European system where the caller can be charged extra because the recipient happens to be on a mobile phone, which you can't always even know before calling. In some cases it can be large; I've been charged $0.30/minute calling a Greek mobile phone in the past, as the caller, when I didn't know I was calling a mobile phone (if it were a landline I would've been charged <$0.10/min). I much prefer the American system where the caller just pays the flat calling-out rate, and it's the owner of the mobile phone who's responsible for the extra cost of mobile.

Paying both ways for SMS is a bit silly, though.

You pay a different price for calling a landline vs a cellphone? I'm still laughing. That's just crazy.

The reason I find it absolutely crazy is that you can't stop people from sending you messages. You can blacklist them (or use a whitelist) of course, but that's still "after" the offense. What happens if a millionaire prankster sends you 20 messages some day? You have t cough up something because of his prank? I find it unreasonable.

But I don't find paying more for calling a cellphone objectionable. A wireless call requires more resources and money for telco company than a wired one (they put wires in houses decades ago and have forgot about it (the maintenance cost is not huge), but they have to actively setup new towers for different locations in cities and change the old ones). It costs them more, so they charge more and I pay more.

> ... you can't stop people from sending you messages

I did. I grew weary of paying for text messages that I have no interest in receiving, so I simply called AT&T and told them to turn off SMS entirely. Since 95% of my phone messaging is via iMessage, and the other 5% is via free Google Voice SMS, I'm not giving up anything at all by turning off my carrier's SMS. I'm not interested in giving a single SMS-related penny to the telecom oligopoly.

Back when cell phones weren't ubiquitous, I once worked at a start-up where one of the really rich technical leads thought it was unfair that he got charged when people called him on his cell phone. I guess he thought that the peons who could only afford land lines were supposed to subsidize him. Which I could have forgiven as plain old selfishness, but he also constantly complained about how unfair society was to the poor.

That specific combination of attributes still bugs me.

It is standard to pay for receiving as well as sending SMS in the US. Everybody knows this is insane.

It's not at all standard on smartphones though. Almost all data plans include at least several hundred texts per month.

Not on AT&T, as far as I can tell. It's either $20/month for unlimited messaging, or $0.20 each. So, unless you're sending or receiving more than 100 messages a month, you're better off without a plan.

I've got a 200 message/month plan from AT&T for $5 a month. My only complaint is that I can't share messages across the two lines on the account so each gets billed $5. (Also, no data plan.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com