Whoever was the original brainchild behind marketing SMS as a premium “feature” is both a genius and a idiot. Genius because it is now an $80 billion plus industry. Idiot because transferring text should really not cost that much. According to a Techcrunch article, it costs $1310 per MB of text messaging. This assuming 160 byte messages and the 20 cent charge on the 3G iPhones if you don’t have a plan. According to AT&T’s own 3G specs, the network can provide up to 128kbps in a moving vehicle. So that’s 160*8=1.28kbits for 20 cents, while you can download 10 times that amount in a single second. There’s something terribly wrong. I believe it will only be time before SMS becomes free after a killer phone messaging web app comes along with free messaging that will dethrone the large networks and their monopoly on SMS.
Jul 032008