Verizon To Charge Content Providers $.03 Per SMS 260
An anonymous reader writes "It appears that Verizon is going to start double-dipping by charging both consumers AND content providers for SMS text messages. Verizon has informed content partners that it will levy a $.03 charge for messages sent to customers, effective November 1. From RCRWireless: 'Countless companies could be affected by the new fee, from players in the booming SMS-search space (4INFO, Google Inc. and ChaCha) to media companies (CNN, ESPN and local outlets) to mobile-couponing startups (Cellfire) to banks and other institutions that use mobile as an extension of customer services.'"
Just crazy... (Score:5, Informative)
I never understood the "pay to receive" idea in the first place.
Anyway, in Australia (at least with one of the companies), you have two types of message. The ones that someone sends to you, and they pay for it. Then there are "premium" services (such as weather, news, games whatever), which you pay to request.
Charging to send AND receive? Greedy bastards should be lined up against the wall and shot.
Viva le revolution!
Re:Email to Text? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:With email on your phone so common (Score:1, Informative)
Because with most companies (say verizon) you need a data plan to send emails. If you don't have a data plan, the fees rack up incredibly fast.
The thing I don't get is, I have a samsung SCH-i760 and my data plan is $40 a month.. blackberry data plans are only something like $20, at most $30. Why? They are both unlimited plans on the same service. People with blackberries are more likely to download/upload more data.... ?
And if you don't have a data plan, the fees are crazy. Just 4 or 5 megs of downloads will put you over $40.. and with the $40 plan I had one month pulled down 150+megs.
Re:*shrug* vote with your feet (Score:4, Informative)
Re:They have it all wrong (Score:5, Informative)
That's a bald faced lie. I've spent countless hours arguing with sprint to even remove the cost of ONE spam text message, let alone wrong numbers. Fuck sprint. I jumped ship the day my contract expired. Good fucking riddance to that garbage company. May they evaporate as the stock market does!!!
I canceled (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They have it all wrong (Score:4, Informative)
...Which I'll have to spend airtime listening to.
Who started this War? (Score:3, Informative)
This is another chapter in the war between SMS and IM. Which will be won by the latter, I guess.
Anyway, Verizon is probably reacting to services like this [ghacks.net] which makes sending SMS from an IM client free. Install an IM client on your phone and you have free SMS.
In the long run, my guess is, we will be all using IM clients to text each other in cell phones. They will consume (a small amount of) bandwidth from our 3G data plans. They will allow us to communicate not only with other cellulars, but with computers, PDAs, and other network devices. And they allow us to text someone in the other side of the world just as easily as in the same city.
SMS may be living a brief moment of glory under the sun. Unless, of course, operators decide to charge it more competitively -- soon.
Re:Just crazy... (Score:3, Informative)
Simple, it goes like this.
In most of the world, cell phones are placed in a different area code (or whatever the equivalent of an area code is in a particular country), and if you want to dial a cell phone from a landline, the wireless carrier bills a settlement fee back to the landline carrier, and that fee is included in the price of a call to that area code.
In the United States and some other places, they didn't bother to do that. Instead, the wireless networks are overlaid on top of the landline networks, so there's no way for the originating CO in another area code to know that it's placing a call to a wireless phone -- or, even if it does, it can't bill the caller differently because it's in the same NPA/NXX as landline phones. So they came up with the crazy idea of billing the wireless subscriber for all airtime regardless of whether the wireless phone is placing or receiving a call.
I'd like to see the wireless carriers offer both pricing models.
Re:They have it all wrong (Score:1, Informative)
This would never be allowed in the UK. The only instance where the receiver pays for the call is when the mobile is abroad the receiver pays the extra cost required so the call maker doesn't get a surprise when they have no idea where the mobile is.
I can't believe this is allowed anywhere...
Re:Email to Text? (Score:3, Informative)
T-Mobile lets you change yourNumber@t-mobile.com to nickname@t-mobile. It stopped spam instantly when I did this because I only gave my nick to a few people. Very nice feature. Other providers may do this as well.
Re:I canceled (Score:1, Informative)
I canceled my Verizon Wireless yesterday (for other reasons). If you want out of your contract with no questions asked, print out This page [verizonwireless.com] and take it in with you to the verizon office. Tell them this is a change to your contract and that you would like to cancel. Ask them to waive the cancel fee. Done. You even get to keep your phone (they told me to sell it on Ebay). This assumes that you were a customer back in April.
Ummm...that change took effect on March 2nd, and you have 60 days from the time that they notified you of the change (which was probably before march 2nd) to cancel without paying the ETF. If you got out with yesterday using that as a justification, then you got extremely lucky. Verizon doesn't play around with waiving their ETF's...I learned that the hard way. It took me hours on the phone and a handful of representatives before they finally agreed to waive my ETF.