Is there any reason, beyond corporate greed, for SMS messages to cost so much?

If I get it right, an SMS message is just a short string of data, no different from a message we send in a messenger. If so, then what makes them so expensive? If we’d take Internet plans and consider how much data an SMS takes, we should pay tiny fraction of a cent for each message; why doesn’t that happen?

  • AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Messages went from $.05, to $.10, to $.20 to send and receive. That was in the span of three years. All of the companies said it wasn’t collision. They just happened to arrive upon massive increases separately.

    If I recall, one of the CEOs said “We’re raising the prices to save customers money. This way they’ll be an unlimited plan”

    The telcos should have been broken up then. Instead we’ve seen even more mergers.

    • Edit: forgot to include the years. This was in the U.S. circa 2005-2008. Telcos have moved onto other sleezy practices now.*