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?
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.
I know you meant collusion, but in case anyone else didn’t, it’s not collision.