A lot of people have written about this particular subject over the last few years. The issue is comparing the cost of sending/receiving a text message vs. the cost of data sent over a wireless carrier's data network. If you have a smart phone, chances are you have a data plan that is about $30/mo for either unlimited data or at least 2GB. And if you text you probably pay anywhere from $5 for a small amount of texts to $20 for unlimited texts.
Here's where the gripes come in. A text message can be a total of 140 bytes per message at a maximum of 160 characters. If your text is more than 160 characters, one text is sent per each set of 160 characters. This is protocol standard. That means that for 140 bytes per message, it would take 7.14 texts to equal 1 kilobyte (KB) of text based data. All texts are sent over the wireless carrier's cellular network and not the data network. That doesn't seem horribly bad until you do the math of the cost to the consumer.
So let's see how many people get upset at their carrier about the math I am about to show. I will use my plan as an example. I pay $30/mo for 2GB of data for email and web over my 3G network. As far as real data size translations go, there are 1000 bytes in 1 kilobyte (KB). There are 1000 kiloybytes in 1 megabyte (MB). Finally, there are 1000 megabytes in 1 gigbyte (GB). That means my $30/mo costs .00015 per byte, or $1.50 per MB when I surf the web and download email. To compare that to text messaging I would have to send 7,140 text messages to equal 1MB. I pay $5 for 250 mesages plus .20 ea message after that. That same 1MB in text messaging would cost me $1,378/mo. Not only that, sending and receiving 7,140 texts in a month means I have to send a text every 12 minutes of every day of every hour. Assuming I send a text and receive an answer. If I'm the only one communicating it would one text every 6 minutes of every day of every hour. If I take time out to sleep I have to send a text every 4 minutes of a 16 hour day. That leaves me no time to do anything.
Look at the cost difference here. 1MB of text messaging costs me $1,378, while 1MB of web browsing and email costs me $1.50! And I can send way more than 160 characters in an email.
Think about how the numbers increase when you're paying for unlimited messages and trying to get 2GB of text messages to equal your data plan. No we're talking 2000 times (1MB x 2000 = 2GB) the number of messages that need to be sent to equal 2GB of texts from my example above. Simply put, there is not enough time in the day for me to send 2GB in text messages in one month, not to mention money. That would cost me $2,756,000!! Talk about a deficit.
So the question is why is texting so much more expensive? The technology has been around for ages. Texting pagers back in the 1990's used this protocol. The technology is not new and is not expensive to maintain. It's all been paid for by the wireless companies. Every penny earned by the carriers is nearly all profit. So that $20/mo for unlimited text messaging in your phone bill is mainly profit for the wireless carrier.
How do you avoid paying the texting fees? There are many applications that allow you to use your data network to send text messages. Google Voice for instance can send text messages to your GMail account instead of your phone, thereby avoiding the cost of the text. You can reply straight from GMail which only uses your data connection. Remember that only costs .00015 per byte. There are other services out there that do something similar. Blackberry Messenger uses the data network instead of the cellular network. The iPhone has a messaging app that allows texts to go over the data network instead of the cellular network. Look in you phone's app market and see if there aren't at least 5 to 10 applications that use the data connection for sending and receiving text messages. Think of it like VoIP for texting.
Give yourself a $240 raise. Cut off the unlimited text messaging and use the data connection you're probably not using up anyway. If you're worried your friends will forget or you get spam texts that cost you money, have your wireless provider turn off texting for your phone. Texts will be blocked from coming in and going out of the phone. The data network is still in full effect and costs way less.
