Tom let me know about an article on RCRwireless that really surprised me. Verizon has just let everybody know that they will be charging companies that send Mobile Terminated SMS messages 3 cents per message. This is on top of current fees that cost a fraction of a penny or more. This means that services such as Twitter, GOOG411, and your bank are now going to cough up a bunch more dough to send you an SMS message. Most of them will probably just stop offering the service.
What the hell is wrong with Verizon??? The receiver, you, already pays to get the message. Why do they need to burn the candle from both ends! These companies sending SMS messages to you are making Verizon money. All this will do is make companies remove these services and thus make Verizon less money!
I just love how Verizon is trying to justify the new fee to cover their rising overhead for delivering SMS.
I still cant get over the fact that SMS messages cost about $1,310 per megabyte!!!
Chalk that up as another money hungry win for the best network on earth…
via RCRwireless
haephaestus Not Registered
Posted: October 10, 2008 at 1:58 AM EST from my BlackBerry 8330
If this helps to reduce sms spam, I really don’t have a problem with it. I’ve started to move away from having services send me sms primarily because I don’t have the ability to archive my text messages so nearly everything is sent to email instead. Nowadays, email storage is cheap and sms is quickly becoming outdated for me due to the archaic 161 character limitation. It would be interesting to define what exactly is ‘free-2-end-user’ services as this might apply to Twitter or Facebook who don’t really charge for sms notifications. But time will tell.
Cheers!
DavidB ( View Profile) Guru - Posts: 1751
Posted: October 10, 2008 at 8:37 AM EST from my BlackBerry 8830
I long ago disabled sms send or receive on my account. I find it unconscionable that I have to pay to receive unwanted messages. The sender should ALWAYS have to be the one paying in my opinion. If this can move us in that direction, I’m all for it. If it is just Verizon figuring out how to monetize something else, well, boo on yoou Verizon. I guess they have to do something since the Alltel buyout is going to cost them almost triple what they planned when it was announced.
Tom Not Registered
Posted: October 10, 2008 at 1:10 PM EST
More on this: http://www.wirelessweek.com/VZW-Rate-Change-SMS-Industry.aspx
“Other operators have talked about raising their transaction fees, but Verizon is the first to take action, the anonymous source said.” Sounds like collusion between the carriers to me…
M3ta Not Registered
Posted: October 12, 2008 at 3:43 PM EST
It’s stupid to pay to receive the MT.
America should just friggin’ evolve and get into 2008 instead of being where Europe was 6 years ago.