Comments on: Shocker! Carriers are Profiting Handsomely from Texting

By: Veronica

Veronica — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 05:30:27 +0000

I work in the cell phone industry myself. It’s not a non-profit orginization, so why do we expect it to be free? If you want to use texting, then you pay the price. If you don’t like it, don’t text! That simple! And think of all the other costs it takes to run a cell phone company. They don’t profit in all areas. In fact, texting is one of the only areas they do profit! So take away the profit, and you will be stuck at home dialing from a landline.

By: emjaycee

emjaycee — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:52:54 +0000

William says:

“Assuming there is no price-fixing going on, why shouldn’t the carriers be able to charge whatever the traffic will bear?”

Because IT’S NOT A FREE MARKET. If I don’t like what my cellular carrier charges for text messaging, what can I do about it? I can’t change carriers because I’m locked into a two-year contract…and even if I weren’t, my friends and colleagues use the same service provider and benefit from unlimited mobile-to-mobile calls, so it’s highly impractical for me to switch to another carrier. And I’d have to get a different phone, too.

Furthermore, it wouldn’t make any difference anyway because ALL the carriers charge the same for text messages. Speaking of which, there are only four carriers in the market now, down from six a few years ago.

This is a perfect example of how inadequate competition hurts the consumer.

By: Speedmaster

Speedmaster — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:47:37 +0000

I commented on this story yesterday here:
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/cretin-or-crook-sen-herb-kohl-of.html

By: william

william — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:10:34 +0000

Assuming there is no price-fixing going on, why shouldn’t the carriers be able to charge whatever the traffic will bear? The price of a product usually reflects the value of the product at least as much as it does the cost to produce the product.

By: Glenn Friesen

Glenn Friesen — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:27:34 +0000

What’s most frustrating isn’t the impact to the individual, but the aggregate impact of overcharging. Fewer people adopt. People that do adopt adopt less. It hurts development of the SMS channel, and development of businesses that use the SMS channel. Ultimately, it unnecessarily limits development of technology and society. Overcharging for texts is like overcharging for gas. A field often misunderstood, but one that almost everybody uses or capable of using. Frustrating and wrong to overcharge…