Flutterby™! : Cost of SMS 2008-01-29 16:26:49.114648+00

Cost of SMS

2008-01-29 16:26:49.114648+00 by Dan Lyke 4 comments

If you divide 140 (the total number of bytes available to you) by 20 (the cost per message), you find that you are paying 1 cent for every 7 bytes of data. This leaves you with a cost of $1,497.97 for the 1024Kbytes contained in a single megabyte. iPod users: It would cost you $5,991.88 to transfer - not even to buy - a single song via SMS.

And yet somehow they have it in their bandwidth to try to convince me that I need to be listening to music over this channel, while charging rates like this for me to communicate with friends. When people wonder why an otherwise mostly free market type like me rails on the need for "network neutrality" legislation and full openness about what sort of internet connection I'm actually being sold, this is why. (Source)

You know, if SMS was used for hyper-critical information, I could see those costs. But the cost is entirely artificial. Heck, the service is even asynchronous so QOS is cheaper than voice.

The only thing I've gotten recently via SMS has been scammers whose charges I've had to dispute, but last time I tried to use SMS the message drop rate was so bad I couldn't imagine actually trying to communicate with it.

#Comment Re: made: 2008-01-29 18:29:04.922825+00 by: jeff [edit history]

I've sent 2-3 SMS messages in my entire life. I don't need or desire the technology (especially at that price point). An acquaintence uses it incessantly, however. No wonder he's in the poorhouse.

I sent a few SMS messages back around 2001 when my friends at BellSouth first got their BlackBerries. I found it very, very annoying to try to type on a phone pad. It was easier to just call.

I do continue to use SMS for flight updates. The airport is about an hour away and I like to have fairly continuous updates on flights I'm either trying to catch or trying to pick up someone from. Unfortunately, the quality of SMS flight status varies greatly from airline to airline. I just flew NWA to Chattanooga and back and never received a single SMS other than the test message. United's tends to be delayed a few hours - making it useless. I think there are some independent sites that simply use the FAA flight tracking data (which is delayed 15 minutes).