Is there any reason, beyond corporate greed, for SMS messages to cost so much?
If I get it right, an SMS message is just a short string of data, no different from a message we send in a messenger. If so, then what makes them so expensive? If we’d take Internet plans and consider how much data an SMS takes, we should pay tiny fraction of a cent for each message; why doesn’t that happen?
I didnt know SMS is expensive. I know it was but i thought it was free nowadays.
When you say free, as in totally free that you can send and receive anytime even without a plan? Or you mean free because it is already included in your prepaid or postpaid plan?
Free as in: unlimited calls and texts are included in pretty much all but the most bargain bin plans nowadays.
I was looking for a new cell provider a couple months ago, and I honestly don’t recall even seeing a plan that didn’t come with unlimited talk and text.
Outside of the legally required 911 you’re not getting anything for 100% free from a carrier, because why would they?
Unlimited SMS is on most cell phone plans nowadays, at least in Canada.
On a slightly different tack: I run a website, and I choose not to implement SMS for notifications - only email. Email is free. Adding SMS, even at $0.007 per message, could add up to big bucks.
Where I live I haven’t seen non unlimited SMS or calls on normal plans in forever.
I pay $170/ month for two phones in the States. I wouldn’t say that SMS is free, but I can send an unlimited amount of messages with that plan.
Holy smokes that’s expensive :D 85 bucks per phone per month
85 per phone? did you get suckered into a contract+new “free” iPhone or something? I pay 40/mo for unlimited everything in the States but could be paying 25-30 if I wanted to switch providers.
SMS message costs are a scam, always have been. It takes like 1-2 seconds worth of talk time for the same amount of sending a text.
What provider are you using? Both AT&T and Verizon are on the order of $80/mo for an individual, down to like $30/person/mo for a family of 5.
T-Mobile prepaid. Mint mobile is also very cheap, but I think there is one cheaper now.
I just looked it up and the $40 T-Mobile prepaid plan has a 10GB data limit. Tbh that’s probably plenty for most people, but it’s not unlimited. Their $50/mo option is unlimited, with caveats (such as throttling once you’ve used too much data).
They are going to monitor your traffic and throttle based on estimated video streaming speed on any of their plans.
Still pretty good compared to ATT and Verizon. Unfortunately I’m stuck with the provider I’m using since they seem to be the only one with good cover wage in my area.
Ah I should have taken into account that I am grandfathered in from the AT&T takeover. That makes more sense.
Holy hell. Sure, I bought my phone (a OnePlus 9) out of pocket but I pay about 20 USD for unlimited calls and SMS with 5Gb of data per month (I can also save unused data from each month to the other up to 15Gb). This is in Sweden for reference.
They are expensive? I pay 10 euros a month and that includes 500 SMS messages and 100 MMS ones along with call time and Internet that I have never exceeded so I haven’t checked how much it is.
I’d argue 10 bucks for that amount of messages is expensive. That’s roughly 2 cents for 1 message. A text is so miniscule in the grand scheme of data being passed back and forth between the phone and a cell tower, you should be getting unlimited messages for $10 bucks. Of course corpos will argue against this
It also includes calls and Internet. Also I have never sent more than 50 SMS messages per month so I guess I haven’t ever cared, most of my communication is either Signal, WhatsApp or Discord. On average it’s probably like 3 sms’ per month though.
I guess I always though it was pretty cheap since I never ran out of data or anything, I don’t think I could send 500 SMS messages if I tried.
I’m curious, what exactly are you sending SMS for nowadays? I can’t remember sending and SMS since at least 10 years, I only receive them for some services.
A relative in their 80s with a dumb phone is the average usecase for me.
Beyond corporate greed, there is none. SMS’ are even sent as part of routine packets on the cellular network so they don’t even take extra data. Carriers might pay extra for inter carrier routing, but again the cost associated with that is mostly corporate greed.
You compare to the internet but you have to remember, back when SMS’ were the only player in terms of cellular messaging, cellular data cost an arm and a leg.
As far as I could understand, North American carriers charged through the nose for mobile data for the longest time, but usually bundled SMS with some plans in some form, be it a set number of messages, or unlimited nights/weekends (oof, I don’t feel younger typing that one out). I was a student working for one of our Canadian carriers the first time I saw more than like a gig of data for less than 70$/month, and that was in the long term contracts, cancellation fees days lol
In most of the rest of the world, data became cheaper faster, but SMS was/is still expensive. This, combined with iPhone’s popularity in NA making people use iMessage, led to a lot of people just sticking to the defaults and use SMS on one side of the Atlantic, while the rest used WhatsApp or similar.
Pretty much, it was still expensive af though. I got my first cellphone in 1999 with Fido. Probably paid something like 50$ month and that came with like 100 texts messages and not very many minutes of local only calling.
My first non-prepaid plan with something that was not the cheapest flip phone possible, must have been around 2006-2007, with a slide phone, and the very minimum plan I could get which was, IIRC, 50 minutes of local calls, unlimited nights and weekends, and exactly zero text messages included, no caller ID nor voicemail 😂 First time I had a data plan was in late 2011, when I got my first smartphone (Galaxy SII), and that was definitely less than 1GB/month…
If you think you’re old, I started with a Nokia 5110…
Oh I don’t think I’m particularly old, statistically speaking I’ve got about the same amount or a bit more left to go… We just all have those moments that make you realize time flies, don’t we?
There was potential legislation and a lot of congressional probes in the mid-late 2000’s in the US that essentially forced cellular carriers to publicly admit that it cost next to nothing on their end to send SMS messages(like 10-7¢ per message) yet they charged insane premiums for them of 20¢ per message. This ended up being the catalyst for US carriers dropping most SMS charges to stay competitive while the rest of the world just changed over to alternate messaging services to avoid the fees instead like you said.
I quit with WhatsApp when Meta acquired it.
Because they can, simple as that. Or well, could. I don’t think I have sent a single text message in a solid decade now, and received only 2FA messages and pickup codes for storage boxes when something was delivered while I wasn’t home.
I really thought SMS is a remnant of the past at this point, just like fax systems. Working for legacy purposes, nothing more.
Are you kidding? Everyone I know, even the kids, prefer sms. You can answer when and/or if you have time or feel like it
Nobody I know uses it, seriously. Every person is using whatsapp, and a handful privacy minded ones are on signal.
Not sure I’m getting your point though, I can answer on every single message protocol whenever I have time or feel like it?
I have a couple of friends and a family member on signal, the rest I text with, except for a neighbor who is too old to be great at it, and a blind friend. Oh and the elderly lady up the street. I guess my point is plenty of people use SMS, I guess it’s whatever people prefer in a given area. I loathe voice, except on rare occasion when I speak with my kid or a good friend of mine, halfway around the world, but that’s through signal, and it’s always great to voice/video chat with him and sometimes his friends or SO.
I used Signal for several years until some spotty areas near the beach it wasn’t working, so I worried it was unreliable and I abandoned Signal & went back to using whatever default SMS my cell provider has on my phone 🫤 Now y’all are reminding me to go back to Signal. Imma go do that now
Are they? I have plans in both the UK and France, and I think they’re both unlimited sms. Not expensive plans, I think the UK one is £7 for unlimited sms, unlimited calls and 20gb of data. French one was 13€ for unlimited sms/calls, and 130gb data on 5g.
7 euros for 20gb of data? I’m paying close to $30 a month for 1 gig and if I cross that the bill shoots up to $40 Fucking American Capitalism.
lol
I pay 15€ a month in Portugal for unlimited data, sms, calls etc and it even includes roaming in the rest of Europe 😊
They aren’t the cost was arbitrarily chosen 30 odd years ago and hasnt changed in all that time despite there being several free alternatives. Data usage doesnt cost what they charge either. Its all a scam.
SMS piggybacks on existing signals to and from your phone. They are entirely free, and have been in a lot of places for a long time.
You’re getting screwed. At least it’s a good reason for your contacts to switch to signal or simpleX?
This isn’t really true anymore. Originally it was and because SMS was rarely used it was effectively free. But then it grew more popular to the point where most messages didn’t have “unused bandwidth” to piggyback on and had to be sent separately. Now days all traffic is basically data traffic and SMS isn’t hiding in some unused space.
That being said it is still so close to free that it doesn’t really matter. Sending 140 bytes of low-priority data is a rounding error.
Huh, TIL. Thanks!
SMS are completely free? I mean yeah, they cost money back in 2009, but that was a loooooong time ago.
Wherever you are, you’re being completely screwed, yeah.
They aren’t free in Canada.
Most plans other than the absolute bottom contain effectively unlimited SMS.
- Freedom Mobile’s cheapest phone plan is $19/month with unlimited calls and SMS: https://shop.freedommobile.ca/en-CA/plans
- Public Mobile’s cheapest plan is $15/month with unlimited calls and SMS: https://subscribe.publicmobile.ca/en/on/activation/plans/unlimitedtalk&text
Yes they are? I guess maybe not up north but in every province they sure are
No they aren’t, you might have an unlimited plan but that’s different
Depends what you mean by free, but in BC any of the lowest cost plans ($15/month) have unlimited SMS included with the plan. The only time I paid per text was on a pre-paid SIM.
$15 bruv I’m paying €6 per month for 250MB of data, 100min calling and yes, already unlimited SMS
NL btw
What are you paying for SMS? I pay 6 euro a month for unlimited sms and calls and 2 GB data. 50+ mobiel is my provider. Now they offer my plan with the first year for 2,5 euro. Dirt cheap.
Yeah, I drop the equivalent of 16€ and I get 60GB data and unlimited calls and SMS with my Danish provider. Having to pay for SMS is purely corporate greed.
What about sending sms to other countries though? I have free domestic sms but pay like 0.20€ for international (within EU).
I pay 0,07€ international, vice versa is free roaming.
Around 0,03 euro per SMS - not huge, but when someone contacts you via SMS and you have to communicate this way, money disappear quickly.
What country?
Russia
Generally a destination with cheap mobile communications. But unlimited SMS messages are not universally featured.
lol russian
Sending an SMS as an operation is just as expensive as checking for signal. Which every phone is constantly doing.
its crazier than you think… the original sms messaging was sent over an already existent, in process data path… they didnt really have to add much to the system to accommodate it, yet charged an obscene amount per message
the answer is simple; because they can
It still does.
SMS is sent within unassigned space within management frames.
Cell works kind of like ATM - Asynchronous Transfer Mode, which unlike packet-switched networks, continually transmits frames (even empty ones), as a means of ensuring stable, performant delivery.
Like ATM, cell kind of does the same thing (that is, when it makes a connection).
Within those frames are segments which are allocated for different purposes, someone got the great idea to transmit bits within a segment that wasn’t yet assigned to anything by the standard.
Those segments can hold… 160 characters (IIRC), and for technical reasons, this became 140 characters (again, IIRC).
So whenever your phone pings a tower, those frames get sent. From a bare transmission perspective, there’s no additional cost. The cost is on the backend hardware that extracts the SMS and the routing of it. So there’s some cost, but at 10 cents per message, there’s got to be 9.9 cents of gross profit (just guessing).
Messages went from $.05, to $.10, to $.20 to send and receive. That was in the span of three years. All of the companies said it wasn’t collision. They just happened to arrive upon massive increases separately.
If I recall, one of the CEOs said “We’re raising the prices to save customers money. This way they’ll be an unlimited plan”
The telcos should have been broken up then. Instead we’ve seen even more mergers.
- Edit: forgot to include the years. This was in the U.S. circa 2005-2008. Telcos have moved onto other sleezy practices now.*
Probably trying to get the last juice to squeeze as more and more traffic moves to web based messaging
They fucked themselves. It became more worthwhile to just use data.
And who provides the data?
WiFi?
WiFi isn’t free. And Idk about you, but where I live the internet service providers are the same as cell providers. I have AT&T for internet, for example. So they still get the money.
But with WiFi, you don’t have to pay extra for more data usage.
That depends. Where I used to live, Comcast had a monopoly and a data cap.
I’m not sure who in this chain is joking, lol
I know you meant collusion, but in case anyone else didn’t, it’s not collision.
Where is this?
This was certainly in the US at one point. I remember having 500 per month, which was an absolute joke for 16 year old me with a girlfriend the next town over, and paying 25 send and 5 receive afterwards. Old cell plans were absolute trash.
Jesus. I remember my first cell was $35/month, 350 minutes of talk, no data and unlimited texts, before smart phones. On contact.
Yeah, I remember when they started rolling out data plans and they were hefty and the Internet on phones was useless. Then GPS on your phone was an add-on, also hefty. So it’s definitely improved.
You had to pay to receive? wtf.gif
So some rando could ruin you by sending a bazillion SMS messages?
You could ignore them and not recieve. But then you’ve got a billion pending messages that you don’t know the content of.
The messages weren’t pushed to you? You got a notification and then had to request the actual message? That would be even more stupid, as it’s using twice the bandwidth.
That’s how it worked on my old phone, you got a message notification but it cost you to actually read it. No clue if they sent the message content before the paywall or if it pulled it down afterward.
But it also meant you could use your phone basically as a beeper without paying for texts. Just see who sent you a message, ignore the actual message and call them.
It was expensive before because it’s a supreme form of communication: don’t need both parties to be online and vacant, conveys complex info in a succint form (think numbers, adresses) that’s saved on both parties’ phones like notes for later, have an option to pay for another party to answer you, could be printed and sent in secret when there’s a meeting or a lesson (with physical buttons most could’ve printed a message under the table) and it kinda had it’s own culture, with basic emoticons and shorthands for words - even if being far from how popular it became in Japan and in pager’s times.
Right now SMS messages aren’t used that much by individuals since it was killed by the internet+messengers+touchscreens trio so they charge extra to milk those who happen to need that. A lot of carriers at my place provide subscription plans with minutes and gigabytes, with SMS as additional paid package or with a ridiculous price for every message.
But they don’t actually earn much here, even if they charge a whopping lot. SMS providers get fed by commercial contracts with services who notify you of delivery, send you verification codes and show you your CC balance. Signal, the messenger, started to look into phone number-less accounts because their non-profit is tired to shoulder the price they need to pay for just an SMS per login. Some services now call instead of texting you and make you write the last numbers of the phone to verify your identity, because it’s cheaper for now.
I feel kinda nostalgic of times when it was popular and carriers introduced special plans for messaging enthusiasts. I hate people calling for every small thing and I’m tired of checking multiple internet channels of information. With SMS it all was simple and direct.
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