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JOULESBEEF
The measurement of power of an exploding cow.~156.4 gigajoules=1 joulesbeef.
Articles Posted: 90; Links Seeded: 1383
Member Since: 5/2006
Member Since: 5/2006
4 Votes
10 Comments
Phone companies are ripping you off for text messages.
News Type: Opinion — Seeded on Mon Dec 29, 2008 12:31 PM EST
Article Source: The New York Timesadvertisement
TEXT messaging is a wonderful business to be in: about 2.5 trillion messages will have been sent from cellphones worldwide this year. The public assumes that the wireless carriers' costs are far higher than they actually are, and profit margins are concealed by a heavy curtain.
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 | What Carriers Aren't Eager to Tell You About Texting | The New York Times | Mon Dec 29 | 0 |
| What Carriers Aren't Eager to Tell You About Texting | The New York Times | Sun Dec 28 | 0 |
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3.6
{"commentId":4585784,"authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
yeah i have been complaing abou this for a while.
at 20 cents a message i runs up to about $1500 per megabyte and thats only if you use every 140 char.
and yes you can get unlimited plans for $20 but you still really write more than 1 meg or 2 a month in TMs.
they are also holding back technology do to their greed and collusive monopoly. Mamny things liek yoru fridge, you bank and others want to us tms but are limited in this due ot hte cost to the consumer.
And really since cells have gone all digital.. phone calls and everythign else is just regular digitial data,.
why do they sell us the ability to chaneg the type of data we send? when that is costless?
whats the differecne between a phone call, watching a vid on youtube and sending tms?
NOTHIGN THATS WHAT. and notice they wont let you use your phoen as a modem now they offer unlimited data plans?
really phone Data companies shoudl sell you a data device and a data plan. If you choose to use it for phone calls good for you.
they split up the same thing in many different chunks so they can resell you the same thing over and over.. it is costless to them and pure greed.
hey give me analog phone and i'd understand but yall went digital and now it is all data.. so quit pretending like it is different services. Unlimited tm plan is an unlimited data plan that you can not use to send vocie packets on. Unlimited phone is really unlimited data plan that you can only send voice packets accross.
WE arent gettign features.. we are having road blocks to features removed as we pay more.
{"commentId":4585784,"threadId":"455464","contentId":"2255167","authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
- 1 vote
#1 - Mon Dec 29, 2008 12:44 PM EST{"commentId":4586496,"authorDomain":"jaybutler"}
at 20 cents a message i runs up to about $1500 per megabyte and thats only if you use every 140 char.
joules: Wouldn't it be double that? Don't most carriers charge both the sender and the recipient $0.20 per message?
{"commentId":4586496,"threadId":"455464","contentId":"2255167","authorDomain":"jaybutler"}
- 2 votes
{"commentId":4586701,"authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
yes it would.
it is really ridiculous and most peopel just accept it cause they dont realize what tms really are. It seems cheap, until you realize how much it costs.
They compare it to printer ink..but atleast printer ink beign expensive makes printers cheap.(companies generaly lose money on the printer and make it back on the ink.. like consoles and games)
TM's dont help pay for your phone, your service.. nothing.. they pad pockets.
and as the cell companies have merged the price of TM's have risen while the cost of TM's have actually gone down.
{"commentId":4586701,"threadId":"455464","contentId":"2255167","authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
- 1 vote
{"commentId":4588095,"authorDomain":"PeterMerel"}
With TMs you don't pay for the data. That's just bits, as you say, worth almost nothing. You pay for participation in the texting protocol.
This is the same thing as paying for participation in any social game. When you play WoW, for example, you're just paying for bits - and each bit is always worth almost nothing to transmit. But to experience the WoW interface - the stuff the bits represent - you pay handsomely. Likewise the cost of minting a paper banknote is almost nothing. But what that banknote represents is what we all work for.
If it wasn't for the fact that by law no other services are permitted to engage the interfaces and reproduce the semantics of banknotes, WoW clients, and texts, then those things would be worth only the tiny amount that it costs to send the bits. But that's not in the carriers' interests. If you were them, wouldn't you do likewise?
{"commentId":4588095,"threadId":"455464","contentId":"2255167","authorDomain":"PeterMerel"}
- 2 votes
{"commentId":4592939,"authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
lol wow is a bit different.. it is a game developed soley by one company for on thing.
you pay for access to the game, not for the right to chat int he game.
TM is just a protocol, wow is a game.
would i do likely wise? probably not.. while it is tempting to charge both ways and to take advantage of peopel when you can, heck it is even profitable. I have always charged a fair rate.
they are walling off the net.. they are takign existing protocols and saying ok you have to pay for this too, and they did not invent these protocols.
heck they want to charge me 2.99 per month to access my aim and 2.99 per month to access my msn and 2.99 per month to acess my gtalk.. see the patern? i get unlimted data but only if i use it their way, otherwise to use it liek a computer to use it like a data service, i have to be nickled and dimed
2.99 per month for aim? and yet $20 per month for TMs makes total scence right
{"commentId":4592939,"threadId":"455464","contentId":"2255167","authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
{"commentId":4593950,"authorDomain":"PeterMerel"}
Texting is a game, albeit one with more real world integration than WoW. You play it, the same as we all play it, because it's the only game that's carried by all phones everywhere. That's thanks to an agreement by the telcos to support the SS7 and ancillary protocols so that they can all mutually make money.
The iPhone breaks the lock these guys have on this particular game. You can, for example, run the free "Fring" client on your iphone and integrate Skype, MSN, ICQ, SIP, Twitter and Google Talk, all for free. One day soon enough there may be enough iphones in the wild for us to forget about texting ...
But then we just pay a different bunch of providers on a different plan for access to different clients. It's all about adding social value to the bits. So long as there's a market for social interaction, we will all pay.
Information wants to be free. But people don't.
{"commentId":4593950,"threadId":"455464","contentId":"2255167","authorDomain":"PeterMerel"}
- 2 votes
{"commentId":4589589,"authorDomain":"fdbryant3"}
The public assumes that the wireless carriers' costs are far higher than they actually are, and profit margins are concealed by a heavy curtain.
I wonder if that is true. I've never assumed it was particularly expensive for them to do. I think most people really just don't care - they either a) get a bundle, b) just pay the cost for the few they do use, or c) simply don't use them.
Personally, I never used txt messages until I signed up with MetroPCS which has unlimited messaging (as well as unlimited data, and minutes) as part of its package.
{"commentId":4589589,"threadId":"455464","contentId":"2255167","authorDomain":"fdbryant3"}
- 1 vote
#2 - Mon Dec 29, 2008 5:32 PM EST{"commentId":4592970,"authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
part of the point is sms is aprt of the future of things.. banks ae usign it to sms pass words.. google will sms 411 and weather and such.. you fridge wants to sms the data on the milk and how much beer you have left and the phone companies want to get a fee for each.
{"commentId":4592970,"threadId":"455464","contentId":"2255167","authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
{"commentId":4590329,"authorDomain":"janeway77"}
It makes no difference what the cost of the product is insofar as it relates to the pricing of the product. The price is determined by MARKET FORCES. In essence, the company will charge what the consumer will pay.
If you think you could go into the text messaging business, and make a profit, selling text messages for a penny a piece, by all means do so! Of course, you're going to spend money on lawyers, accountants, taxes, buildings, infra-structure, technology licenses, etc--- so be sure to include that into your cost.
{"commentId":4590329,"threadId":"455464","contentId":"2255167","authorDomain":"janeway77"}
- 1 vote
#3 - Mon Dec 29, 2008 6:46 PM EST{"commentId":4593043,"authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
hte point is simply to point out hte exorbitant rates people are paying.
and it is particially do to a collusive monopoly which is illegal.
still this is no different than pointing out the exorbitant costs of bottled water or printer ink.
ANd to encourage "market forces" to demand better.
still it is hard to deny that as competition decreases TM"S went up even as cost went down.
Which proves a FREE MARKET is A BS MARKET without healthy independent competition.
Infrastructure is there in case you missed it.. it is data and a whole lot less data than our now digital calls.
there is no licensing for TM
but nice spin, like it or not they are still way over charging. and yes they do it cause we pay.
I'm encoruaging people to demand better.
and sicne these collusive monopolies get their monoploy by leasing our airwaves i think i have the right to have a say in how they abuse that purchaced monopoly.
{"commentId":4593043,"threadId":"455464","contentId":"2255167","authorDomain":"JoulesBeef"}
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