Comments on: Verizon Wireless considers extra text fee

The wireless company is considering a plan to charge companies that send SMS text alerts three cents extra per message.

[Pete Bardo]

Charge the political organizations double the fee. I'm tired of politicians getting a free ride while the rest of us suffer.

What is the rate charged to commercial aggregators anyway? Seems you left that piece out. Three cents may not seem like much in itself, but as a percentage of the current charge would make a lot more cents to us plain folk.

Verizon is the worst of all carriers. I hope it never comes to the point where I will need to decide between Verizon and no service. It'll be a hard choice to make.

And I agree with you. All the wireless carriers charge way too much for texting.

[aka_tripleB]

On Buzz Out Loud today, they found an article that says commercial aggregator about $0.01 per message. They weren't certain that it's the correct rate, but that's what they found on the fly.

[Flame2Flames]

how is Verizon the worst of all carriers it has the best service maybe not customer service but definitely better reception, sprint is alright, at&t sucks never drops a call only cause you can't make one, t-mobile might be alright.

[rocwoof]

What about text messages generated from email? Would a scheme such as is being "discussed" by Verizon find some way to charge back to email services' accounts, such as ISP subscribers? Maybe a positive outcome of that would be the long-sought reduction in spam ("SPIM" I think is the term for spam text messages?) in this case by means of charging the sender. Puzzling underlying economics/tech nexus here though...

[rocwoof]

Oh this was funny: several ads for "free" email text messaging services "from your computer" popped up right after I submitted my post above ;-)

[aka_tripleB]

Just another reason to dump Verizon. A month ago, I found out that some text messages fall under Verizon's "Standard Text Messaging Rates" despite that the service states that only "standard text messaging rate apply." And if you look at your bill, these "premium" messages aren't even found in the text messaging portion of the bill; it's put under the vauge "data usage" part. If that's not bad enough, Verizon tells you it has no way to tell you what you did to accrue the fee

[Dalkorian]

Simple, you paid it. It's the same reason rapists give for why they raped a girl, because "she was asking for it". Does this make you feel more important? You're getting raped because you have to feel important with one of those self-absorbed toys. You're "asking for it", so you got it.

Now bend over and take it like a good sheep.

[harry5878]

It's good to know that Version will not charge text fee to non-profit organization, but it would definitely affect the start up companies. If the SMS service generates nearly 100 percent profit then why Version is claiming the necessity of extra text fee?

Lou
www.jobsearchdigest.com/pesd

[kieranmullen]

No the network is not free, but what is the actual cost per message? Comon!

When I was with Airtouch cellular (before verizon bought them out) texting was free and this was more than 7 years ago... and the prices have gone up and up...

Anyone asking why???

KieranMullen
http://360oregon.com

[agbejat]

Considering the fact that they take about 50% of all revenue accruing from premium campaigns, this is highway robbery!!

[BeamerMT]

I thought the FCC was supposed to be looking into how Cell Companies are charging for text services. I have never seen a report that explains, in any way, the cost of a text message and why some carriers charge up to .25 cents a message in AND out!. Then again with the global economy collapsing and whatnot, maybe it all got shelved to the back burner?

[Dalkorian]

LOL - news flash ... the telcos own the FCC. That's how they're getting away with this to begin with!

[connectme360]

Well...as a small business that relies on texting, this definitely puts a crimp on things.

However, not unexpected.

SMS isn't "free", but it is amazingly scalable and "next" to free. Remember all of the Twitter outages? It does cost *something* to provide uptime. Does an alert system "work" if there's an emergency and some people get the message right away, but others get it fifteen minutes later?

Of course not.

There's no doubt that the carriers are freaking out about their incredibly shrinking landline business. The voice business has been commoditized, and it costs real $$$ to build and manage all of the cell towers so they can scale with the increases in business. Since texting has already overtaken voice traffic among younger consumers, the writing is already on the wall: the place to charge more is texting.

Also, Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) has accused the wireless industry of collusion on wireless pricing. (Never mind that the carriers needed to harmonize pricing in order to get SMS going in the first place...after all, would you have texted someone for the first time if you didn't know if it was going to cost ten cents, or a dollar?) However, Sen Kohl does raise valid points regarding the price increases.

I'd argue that the political drive to drive costs down runs counter to innovation with carriers: the Byzantine maneuvers required to comply (like premium/standard rate, etc.) leads to subscriber anger (see above), and hence churn. As I discuss further in my blog, churn is the carrier's primary pain point.

http://connectme.typepad.com/news/2005/04/vodafone_mullin.html

[fredmenace]

What I don't understand is why they don't charge for all text messages sent in the first place, rather than charging the recipient. Nearly every text message I have ever received has been spam - and I've been charged to receive every one of them.

[Dalkorian]

Nearly every text message you have ever received has been spam and you have been charged to receive every one of them. Better yet, you PAID to receive every one of them, but now you want to cry foul? LOL.

Just keep bending over and taking it like a good sheep and keep your mouth shut before they start raping that too. You're important enough, as evidenced by the fact that you could get a cell phone to begin with.

[dburr13]

Verizon could not have worse timing...In a crumbling economy Verizon's "Premium" services are going to be on top of the list of things that people will give up in order to make sure they have enough money for essentials...In this case people will go elsewhere for these services if they can find a less predatory pricing scheme.

[Dalkorian]

If Verizon gets away with this, what makes you think the others won't do the same thing? They're all in collusion already, as evidenced by the tidal wave of price increases for a service that costs the telcos virtually nothing to run.

Just bend over and take it like a good sheep. Open your mouth and they might decide to start raping that next.

[dburr13]

Verizon could not have worse timing...In a crumbling economy Verizon's "Premium" services are going to be on top of the list of things that people will give up in order to make sure they have enough money for essentials...In this case people will go elsewhere for these services if they can find a less predatory pricing scheme.

[Efreet]

how about stopping the premium services from billing you until you actually go to their website and enter the pin that's sent to you. I'm guessing the lost time at Customer service from complaints would drop if they did this. They must get tons of calls about this issue but their response it's not our fault you did it. Just getting the text from those scam artists is grounds for VZW to bill you even thou you have no clue they are. No idea how they get your number and if it wasn't a mistake in the first place.

[leeje69]

Verizon's 'shooting from the hip' here is pretty classic. The immediate retraction of this contract change (make no mistake, this was not a proposal, this was a contract amendment) suggests that they realized how devastating this would be to their partners and to VZW itself. With a marginal cost of about $.002 per SMS, this new $.03 charge is ridiculous. Many critical services (like emergency alerts delivered by municipalities to the public) would not be viable in this instance.

Verizon has been careless in stating the actual reason(s) that compelled them to make this change. I'm sure that part of this is because they are selling more data plans with unlimited SMS. As such, they don't make any incremental revenue when people utilize these standard rate services (sports scores, weather alerts, breaking news). I think they fail to realize that it is the ability to receive these services that compels people to pay the extra money for the unlimited SMS plan in the first place.

My company is one of the largest providers of these services. If Verizon re-instates this charge, we will have little choice but to turn off our services for Verizon subscribers. I don't relish making that decision, and I hope VZW is aware what a difficult situation it creates for the rest of the marketplace.

[ballparkbob]

My company provides mobile marketing solutions to businesses and advertisers. If Verizon goes through with this charge, I don't see an alternative, but to block Verizon customers. Ultimately, we will have to offer Verizon at a higher rate to make up for the 3 cent charge. The problem is the margins are already so slim in this industry. This move by Verizon puts a crimp on a mobile marketing business that is on the brink of booming.

[justgold79]

Text should be free as it doesn't cost a cell company a dime, at least on the users end.