Gizmodo - AT&T’s killing their $10/1,000 text plan. Now, you’ll have to choose between $20 for unlimited, or forgo a plan and pay $0.20 per message. AT&T calls this “streamlining.” We call it what it is: an outrageous, gigantic scam.
It’s important to note, before considering anything SMS, that text messages are essentially free. Not for you, of course, but for companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Unlike uploading a video to YouTube from your phone, which eats mobile bandwidth, text messages ride the same itsy bitsy communication channel your handset uses to check in with local towers to make sure it’s turned on. Each text hitches a ride on an infinitesimally small data packet, chugging through traffic that would’ve been there anyway. For AT&T, it’s basically a freebie—160 bytes of data. A trifle. Compared to the rest of what they’re transmitting, AT&T’s texts are like amoebas on the back of a tyrannosaurus.
For you, it’s quite the opposite. For you, text messages cost money. A lot of money. How much money? Well that all depends. Starting next week, the only texting options for new AT&T subscribers will be a $20/month unlimited buffet, or paying per text, which is insane.
And here’s why it’s insane. Absolutely, skull-implodingly, village-razingly, jump-out-your-window-into-spikes insane.
AT&T offers a 2 gigabyte per month phone data plan for $25. By breaking this down, we can find out how much they think each text’s worth of data costs. And according to this value, when you’re using the same amount of data to send a text without a messaging plan, they’re charging you 100,000 times more. Yes. Blink a few times and read that again. When AT&T calls data texting, it costs 100,000 times more than when it’s in the form of photos, music, email, or anything else.
They’re ripping you off with the force of a nuclear bomb. More
