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?

  • AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    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.*
      • skulblaka@startrek.website
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        7 months ago

        You could ignore them and not recieve. But then you’ve got a billion pending messages that you don’t know the content of.

        • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          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.

          • skulblaka@startrek.website
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            7 months ago

            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.

    • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Probably trying to get the last juice to squeeze as more and more traffic moves to web based messaging