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SMS Text Messaging & Youth Debt One
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Jan 09, 2005 09:13 AM
from the american-kids-really-do-suck-at-math dept.
from the american-kids-really-do-suck-at-math dept.
securitas writes "The New York Times' Lisa W. Foderaro reports on the impact of SMS text messaging and resulting debt on America's youth. The predictable but seldom-considered effect of the recently available technology combined with the social role instant messaging and SMS play are leading to bills that youth and parents alike can't afford. 'Many high school and college students accustomed to sending unlimited instant messages on their computers do not adapt easily to text messaging's pay-per-message format, and end up with unexpectedly high bills' ranging from $300 to $800 per month. One school principal says that 'many students were blindsided by costs associated with text-messaging and other features, like customized ring tones"
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In the Philippines (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In the Philippines (Score:3, Insightful)
Only complete and utter congential cretins like the US telcos would think of giving monthly billable credit to kids. Hardly surprising that the economy is falling to pieces along with the social structure :-)
Will the last
Re:In the Philippines (Score:2)
Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
You could say the same thing for cell phones in general.
I had to "work-off" my long distance phone bills in the BBS days...
You set the limits as a parent... and if the kid goes over it, he/she pays.
It's called growing up.
Re:Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a story?
PS - there was an article in the local paper recently about how "the fees add up fast." Indeed they do, and this is why I don't have many of these monthly-fee services.
Parent
Shocking truth (Score:3, Insightful)
Shock horror.
Re:Shocking truth (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just another sign that people are stupid.
Parent
Re:Shocking truth (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. Or did you mean to say, "Commercial services may be expensive." It may be splitting hairs, but sending SMS messages costs almost nothing but is grossly overpriced. For no reason other than that it is usefull enough that people will pay anyways. Ahh, the free market at its best!
Parent
one simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:one simple solution (Score:2)
Re:one simple solution (Score:2)
That's not a solution. The solution is stop being fucking irresponsible.
Re:one simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Carrying a cell-phone around strikes me as needless baggage and excessive availability. I prefer not to have to be reachable by every human being on earth every moment of every day. I'd like to consider my time sipping a coffee and reading the paper in the local cafe on a Saturday morning as _my_ time. Nobody should ever need to reach me so urgently that I need to carry a device that would permit disruption of that.
I understand why UPS drivers need a cell. I understand why cab-drivers need to. I can even understand why a CEO or an IT manager might. But beyond that, it's just a frivolous toy. Children managed to keep in touch with their parents and let them know where they were and what htey were doing for decades prior to this without posessing cell phones.
If I had a child, I can't imagine them providing any viable excuse as to why I should purchase a cell phone for them and pay the bill. And as their parent, I would not let them get one and pay for it themselves for the simple fact that I want to avoid them putting themselves into debt before even seeking out college loans a few years down the road.
Why six year olds and fifteen year olds are carrying them around like a house-key is beyond me.
Parent
Re:one simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Payphones are not everywhere anymore. Even when I was in school there was only one payphone on campus for grades 7-12. Now there is none.
2. Collect calls cost an arm and a leg. After getting a few "come pick me up" calls I was in awe.
3. Calling cards don't always work in payphones.
4. You can often get a family plan with unlimited airtime between family phones.
5. Safety
I'm not saying that getting a cellphone for a kid is the right choice. But there are good reasons why one may consider it. I went with a pre-paid phone for my nieces. "Come pick me up" cost 25-55cents and there was no chance in hell there would be a charge above and beyond what was pre-paid.
Parent
How much do you pay for SMS (Score:2)
Re:How much do you pay for SMS (Score:2)
Re:How much do you pay for SMS (Score:3, Insightful)
is that one has to pay for recieving messages.
Here in Belgium, you only have to pay for sending, mostly about 0.13 (about $0.10 or less)
It's not like you have to pay to recieve a phonecall or something, or am I mistaking?
Re:How much do you pay for SMS (Score:3, Informative)
From what I understand, this is quite backward from how the rest of the world does things. Land lines do have free incoming calls, but this is not the case with cellphones (mobiles)
Re:How much do you pay for SMS (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How much do you pay for SMS (Score:4, Insightful)
So cell phone SPAM also incurrs a charge?
Yeesh!
We pay corporations to wear the clothes they make in sweat shops so we can display their logos.
We get increases in ticket prices to go see movies which have become chock full of placed products that advertisers pay the studios to put in.
Now, we pay the cell phone companies every time an advertiser sends us an SMS ad?!?!
WTF?!?!
Next time someone sings the praises of the capitalist free world, I'll be sure to shovel all that back to them and remind them how great it is that big business can freely make us pay through our noses!
Parent
News! (Score:3, Insightful)
There's really no excuse for this kind of thing except sheer stupidity. I know that Sprint allows unlimited incoming/outgoing SMS messages for $10 a month. This is really no different than a kid running up their parent's credit card a buck a shot to $400, when you get down to it.
As for me, I can't really even imagine sending and receiving 300 SMS messages a month, let alone the 3000 that these kids seem to handle with ease. Maybe I could do it with a Sidekick, but damn, not with a regular cell phone.
Stupid semi-OT question: does anyone have any experience with buying a T608 on eBay and getting Sprint to set it up to work with the network? Any experiences on how good a phone it is in general?
-Erwos
In A Related Story... (Score:5, Insightful)
To be blunt, it really makes me think that most of America's youth is too stupid to know that X messages @ $0.yy ea = $lots'ocash.
Pay to recieve SMS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you guys also have to pay for recieving post (with a stamp)?
Re:Pay to recieve SMS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Pay to recieve SMS? (Score:2)
It probably varies by provider, but Verizon charges for incoming and outgoing messages.
Solution - block text messaging - that way none get through.
Re:Pay to recieve SMS? (Score:4, Informative)
It's not just the US. Here in Canada it's the same. My carrier once decided to give me a 'free' trial of the service (no subscription fee, still pay to receive). I found out I was getting it when I got two spam text-messages. Then I got charged for receiving the text messages I didn't want. That was why I hadn't ordered the service in the first place.
It's in the carriers interest to have you use the service if they get to charge you the fees for receiving the messages.
I've never been happy with a model where someone I don't know or want to communicate with gets to cost me money. That's like collect calls from telemarketers.
Shh. They're listening and might think that's a good idea.
Parent
Prepaid cards (Score:2, Informative)
Did that make any sense at all?
In France (Score:2, Funny)
Re:In France (Score:3, Informative)
From what I understand, the problem is that the cost of SMS messaging adds up faster than you realize. Imagine you have a friend that works nearby and you want to ask them if they want to have lunch together:
Now, if that was a normal voice call, that conversation will take all
T-Mobile (Score:2)
Free Unlimited MMS on my $29.99 acct.
Would you like some cheese . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
And I believe today's User Friendly comic is apropos: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050109 [userfriendly.org]
Answers (Score:4, Informative)
- Yes, most carriers charge you to receive SMS here in the U.S. If you use SMS a lot you should get unlimited SMS. It is usually an extra $10.
- Yes, you can buy prepaid SIM cards here, or have prepaid accounts. This solves the entire problem, but if mentioned it would not allow us to whine about the "corporations".
- Yes, young adults send a lot of SMS messages. Europeans send a hell of a lot more than Americans do. Vodafone says SMS+ringtones makes up 40% of their business in the EU. FORTY PERCENT. This just proves that both the EU and the USA are filled with stupid people with too much money.
- Yes, typing a message with T9 on a keypad can be tough, but people like it. It is not "better to just call them up". SMS's are silent and can be made discreetly (not discretely kiddies).
For Chris'sake, who would give a child a cell... (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, and maybe not giving them a cell at all would work, too.
People are stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just like those idiots who get the cheap introductory offers from companies like 3 and think "ooh, I'm getting a good deal" , but don't look up how much the normal monthly tariff is. It often doubles from £15 to £30 after three months or something, with a one year minimum.
Ridiculous pricing (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, when i found out i could download AIM for my phone, i initially assumed the price must be something reasonable, since as a programmer i know that an SMS message probably take up the bandwidth equivalent of a few seconds of voice call, and voice calls cost about $0.0022 cents per second.
Luckily before i started using it i found out that each IM (note: i didn't say "each IM session") costs 10 cents. Yikes!
It's sort of like a hotel mini-bar. When a naive person first comes across one, they think, "Oh, i could go for a soda. That costs about 89 cents, so i'm sure with a hotel markup, it'll be like $1.50 or $2." Then they find out the mini-bar price is $5. It's their own fault, but it's understandable since one doesn't expect such a large markup.
The question is, since we live in a land of capitalism and the cell phone market has tremendous competition, why hasn't the price of SMS messaging dropped? For that matter, why hasn't the price of mini-bar food dropped?
Re:Ridiculous pricing (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically, when the GSM standard was first created, SMS messages weren't thought about too much. They were shoved into some teeny little side band that was used for low-bandwidth control information or something along those lines. The designers didn't forsee the incredible popularity that SMS would have in the future. The end result is that even though SMS messages are incredibly low bandwidth, and there is a ton of bandwidth floating around, they can't use it because they're restricted to this tiny piece of the spectrum. That's not to say that the price isn't also due to some nice gouging on the part of the companies, but there are good technical reasons for a minute of relatively high-bandwidth voice to cost less than an SMS.
This is pure speculation on my part, but this may also by why MMS often costs less than SMS even though they usually contain a lot more data.
Parent
Re:Ridiculous pricing (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
This won't last (Score:2)
The cell companies just haven't jumped on the "everything is free" bandwagon that made the Internet so profitable yet.
And who-the-f*ck is stupid enough to subscribe to "custom ring tones"?
Why this *IS* a Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
use IM clients in phones instead SMS (Score:2)
for MSN Messenger [getjar.com]
for ICQ [icq.com]
for IRC [sourceforge.net]
using GPRS isn't free either, but it's still cheaper compared to sending same amount of text over SMS
Unqualified (Score:3, Interesting)
One school principal says that 'many students were blindsided by costs associated with text-messaging and other features, like customized ring tones'
Wow, what a frank admission by one Mr. Kevin Truitt that he isn't properly teaching kids to grow up in today's society. How hard is it to get a math problem reworded to make such costs more obvious? "Little Billy sends Suzie 8 eight SMS a day at 12 cents each . . ."
Ideal phone advert.. (Score:3, Funny)
"Hello, im John Smith head of the ACME network. Do you know how much we in the mobile phone industry like to rip you off? our profit margins go as high as %100,000 and we all work together to keep it that way. But at ACME we've decided to rebel, starting today we're embarking on a vicious price war with our competitors, we'll give you a no-contract pay-as-you-go network with absolutely free SMS messages any time and any place, no matter where you go in the world they'll still be free and unlimited and right now our competitors are all having heart attacks. How do we do this and still charge your calls at reasonable prices? simple, it costs us almost nothing to route your messages and we figured we would steal 95% of our competitors customers in just one week. So fuck you Orange, T-Mobile, O2, Vodaphone, Virgin, 3, and all the others, we're just about to screw your cash cow in the arse" (does hand gesture) "SUCK IT"
Cingular brochure... (Score:3, Informative)
On Cingular's brochure, it had details about the text messaging service. Without a plan, each message SENT OR RECEIVED would cost $.10. You could turn off text messaging, but Cingular would be unable to guarantee that you would not receive any incoming messages.
Huh? I would turn it off, saying I do not want any, and Cingular would still charge me ten cents if they were unable to block an incoming message? How in the hell?
Text messaging seems cool to me, but the outrageous prices here in the U.S. make it unreasonable. Make it $2 for unlimited and I would be interested.
[Note: I tried to find the same paragraph on Cingular's site but they say to the see the appropriate brochure for terms and conditions of featured services like text messaging.]
Re:Why are SMSs so expensive? (Score:3, Informative)
$800 a month assuming it was all text messages (which the article says it wasn't, but still)
$.10 a message yields 8000 messages.
Per message limit of 160 according to the article (GSM is a bit higher IIRC) + Call it 40 bytes of header information 8000 * (160 + 40) = 1600000.
1024 bytes in a kilobyte. 1600000/1024 = 1562.5
1024 k
Re:THE HORROR! (Score:2)
Re:THE HORROR! (Score:2)
it even bypasses keypad lock if you dial in 911 or 112
Re:Solution (Score:3, Informative)
get stuff free, pay only 17.99
sms costs 5 cents to send, so 17.99 gets you 360 sms from your phone and sore thumbs
in average mon
Re:Competition... (Score:2)
I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to have more competition, but I would think that population density and coverage areas are the biggest factors in cost.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if US rates are lower than average if you somehow factor in the square mileage (kilometerage?) covered by the networks. And that's not to mention that a lot of those miles are very sparsely populated.
\not going to do the math myself, though.
Re:I had these bills when I was 13 19 years ago. (Score:2)
I'm not sure why kids need celphones. I never needed one and kept in touch with friends jus
Re:Only in North America (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SMS on cell phones- QUIT YOUR WHINING!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think 10 cents a message can be considered "arbitrary and complicated".
At some point, the carrier should have done an automatic "courtesy upgrade".
Do you know of ANY common service that works this way ? If you bring 12 individual cans of Coke to the cashier at the supermarket, do you expect the cashier to say: "Gee each can costs 75 cents, but a twelve pack only costs $4. I'm going to automatic