U.S. Senate Asking Cell Phone Companies Why Text Messaging Costs So Much

17 billion text messages were sent in the U.S. in 2000 and 500 billion in 2004. Let’s assume that this has at least doubled to 1 trillion text messages this year (probably an underestimate on my part). People without add-on text messaging plans pay about 20 cents per message. If you have some kind of plan, you probably pay about 1 to 5 cents per message depending on a variety of factors (limited vs. unlimited plans & how many messages you actually sent). Text messaging is probably the most expensive data related service in the U.S. on a per byte basis.

Let’s compare it to a typical 3G wireless data plan for something like the Verizon or Sprint MiFi 3G WiFi router. Both firms charge $60/month for 5 gigabytes of data. Let’s assume that the typical text message is about 100 characters long (a huge overestimate in my opinon, but it makes the simple math even simpler). That means that you could send the equivalent of 50 million 100 character long text messages every month and still not go over the 5GB/month 3G limit. And, yet, cell phone companies typical charge $5 per month for a mere 200 to 300 messages and $20 per month for unlimited. Although fractional 3G data accounts are not available, let’s say for the sake of argument that you could get a 1.6GB per month 3G data plan for $20 month. It would let you send 1.67 million messages per month. Even with an unlimited $20 per month text message service, will ever send anywhere near 1.67 million messages per month on your phone?

According to MyNewsJunkie, the U.S. Senate has a few questions of their own for cell phone carriers about their text message pricing…

Cell Phone Execs Will Face Questions On Text Messaging Price Hikes

Their answers should be very interesting (if not downright amusing).

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