AT&T Raising Rates: SMS Messages to Cost $1,500 Per MB

I text so infrequently that I don't bother with an unlimited text messaging plan, so I just suck it up and shell out the 15 cents a pop whenever I need to jot off a note. But now comes news that my carrier, AT&T, is raising its rates again: 20 cents for an SMS and 30 cents for an MMS (whether you send or receive), leaving some to wonder if we aren't getting really rooked in the deal.

Gthing.net did the math: Turns out, we are. At 140 bytes per SMS (that's the maximum allowed) and 20 cents per message, doing some simple division gives you a truly crazy $1,498 per megabyte. And of course, it's double that if somebody actually responds to your message.

I understand that messaging has its own overhead issues and that it probably ought to be more expensive than standard data transfers, but SMS is now undergoing nothing less than runaway inflation. Cingular/AT&T just raised its SMS rates from 10 to 15 cents only one year ago, and here they jump again. The above bandwidth analogy isn't perfect, but it's illustrative and instructive of just how badly consumers are getting gouged on what is a basic and inexpensive service for the carriers to operate.

Oh, and AT&T isn't alone: Sprint's SMS rate is already 20 cents a message. Verizon and T-Mobile are both now at 15 cents a pop. How long until 20 cents becomes the new industry standard? Humbug, I say!

LINK: The True Cost of SMS Messages