The real cost of texting

tommyboy

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/114665

Thought this was an interesting read, I thought the reason texts cost so much was cause of a high price of transmitting. I used to HATE texting, but since everyone would text me anyways I couldn't be the anti-social ****.

Now I probably send between 2500-3000 a month and was dissappointed to read this. But it isn't going to change my texting habits anyways (which is probably why they charge me an arm and a leg for it:p) but for those who don't know.

bobman1235

Your link is broken : http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/114665

2500-3500 a month? Seriously, that's sad, are you a 13 year old girl?

tommyboy

bobman1235 wrote: »

Your link is broken : http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/114665

2500-3500 a month? Seriously, that's sad, are you a 13 year old girl?

Yeah I fixed it. The name is tommyboy not tomboy;). Thats actually low compared to other people my age. Why is it sad? Seriously, ladies don't like talking on the phone anymore thats what sad

PhantomOG

I'm still in my 20's (just barely).

Lifetime text message sent by me: 0

In fact I have a block setup with Verizon so I can't even receive text messages (got tired of paying for the occasional spam message).

irishaz

+1...

Texting may be the single lowest form of communication on the planet in my opinion. It doesn't make me anti-social not to text some ignoramus back...it means I'm no longer in high school. When I see grown men texting it makes me wonder how many times they have seen "Twilight". My daughter sends about 3,000/month and most of them say "ha, ha", "LOL", or "What's up" response: "nothing" response: "me either". It's when they are texting when they are sitting next to each other that I wonder about the next generation.

bobman1235

It's sad for a couple reasons. Don't take this as a personal attack, you're obviously not out of the ordinary, I mean this more as a social commentary.

And let me start out by saying I like texting for a lot of things - quick messages like "i'll be a bit late", or trying to meet up with someone "where you at?", or making a quick joke, or any of a million other quick things.

But when you're talking about 2500 a month (83 a DAY!), first of all, it's not a good communication medium. Like, actually conversing... you lose a lot of nuance over text, especially when you're limited to 140 characters. It's hard enough to communicate over email wtihout being misunderstood.

But moreso, and this is a problem with cell phones in general and people who abuse them, not just texting, we've lost the ability to enjoy being where we are in a moment. Not to get too deep, but how much time do you spend actually enjoying where you are, interacting with people where you are, rather than staring at your phone and texting or talking to someone miles away? It's no wonder our interpersonal skills are diminishing, and everyone is more rude and inconsiderate.

Rabble rabble, I'm an old man apparently.

tommyboy

bobman1235 wrote: »

It's sad for a couple reasons. Don't take this as a personal attack, you're obviously not out of the ordinary, I mean this more as a social commentary.

And let me start out by saying I like texting for a lot of things - quick messages like "i'll be a bit late", or trying to meet up with someone "where you at?", or making a quick joke, or any of a million other quick things.

But when you're talking about 2500 a month (83 a DAY!), first of all, it's not a good communication medium. Like, actually conversing... you lose a lot of nuance over text, especially when you're limited to 140 characters. It's hard enough to communicate over email wtihout being misunderstood.

But moreso, and this is a problem with cell phones in general and people who abuse them, not just texting, we've lost the ability to enjoy being where we are in a moment. Not to get too deep, but how much time do you spend actually enjoying where you are, interacting with people where you are, rather than staring at your phone and texting or talking to someone miles away? It's no wonder our interpersonal skills are diminishing, and everyone is more rude and inconsiderate.

Rabble rabble, I'm an old man apparently.

Yeah I agree with you. But its to the point people don't even pick up their phone anymore, you call they don't pick up and then you send them a text two seconds later and they reply to you and you end up texting them for an hour.

Just to make sure, I don't send 2500 texts a month, thats send and recieved

PhantomOG

I just remember being in college and things like AIM and ICQ were just getting started. It was fun for the first few months, then I just got sick of it. I ended up always keeping myself at "Away". Then I just stopped using them altogether.

Texting is just like those services to me, but instead of being annoyed with it while I'm at my computer, I'm annoyed with it anytime I have my phone with me (all the time).

metal83

I don't understand this need to text. If you have the phone in you're hand, why not just dial the person's number and "TALK" to them, seems much easier to me. I despise text messaging, but of course, to each their own.

bobman1235

metal83 wrote: »

I don't understand this need to text. If you have the phone in you're hand, why not just dial the person's number and "TALK" to them, seems much easier to me.

As I said above, it's useful in certain situations. Talking isn't always feasible or even reasonable. One good example is say you're meeting some friends in a loud bar. You're outside, wondering where in the bar they are. What's easier, screaming into the earpiece and trying to hear them over the noise, or sending a quick text?

Obviously an extreme example, but I think it illustrates the usefulness. Like most things, it's getting abused to ****.

PhantomOG

I see the usefulness in certain situations, I just don't understand why its popularity extends so much beyond that small scope of usefulness. Honestly, I think its mostly just crap messages as you said before, even for adults. I just have too many other things I could be doing with my time.

metal83

bobman1235 wrote: »

As I said above, it's useful in certain situations. Talking isn't always feasible or even reasonable. One good example is say you're meeting some friends in a loud bar. You're outside, wondering where in the bar they are. What's easier, screaming into the earpiece and trying to hear them over the noise, or sending a quick text?

Obviously an extreme example, but I think it illustrates the usefulness. Like most things, it's getting abused to ****.

Yeah i can understand texting for reasons like that, something quick when talking is almost impossible. Other than that, i see no use for it what so ever. I just prefer to actually talk to someone with my phone, not type with it. I do enough typing on these forums...:p

And it's certainly annoying when you're out with people, and someones "constantly" looking at there phone sending messeges, pretty rude IMO, but i guess it's the norm now a days.

Kex

I used SMS when I was travelling in Europe a while back and loved it for several reasons: I could send a text to the wifey over here, even if she was asleep, and she could do the same back at me when I was alseep or busy, and it made simple messages like "I arrived safely" or "I just landed" easy to do, without bothering the people next to you by forcing them to listen to you on your mobile. It was much cheaper than calling from over there (using a European SIM card in a T-mobile phone). It also means you can text someone a message even if you know they are not available to pick up the phone. There are a whole lot of other reasons I like texting ... like just keeping in touch with friends on a regular basis, even if you have nothing serious to say.

There was a whole discussion over there too about the outrageous charges, and I was only paying 0.10 to send, or less, IIRC, but in Europe, the recipient is not charged like we would be here, so it was much cheaper to use, and you're not forcing the recipient to pay for your message (very rude, IMO). They were still complaining about the phone companies ripping off clients though. Over here, paying to send and receive seems ridiculous, so I never use it ... ever.

I suppose it's a bit like buying a car. The dealer has trouble making any money on the sale of the car itself, so some try to make huge margins on the extras. There was a very revealing article somewhere very recently, that adds to the discussion referenced in the link above, explaining that if everything else were priced like text messages, it would cost over $1,000 to download one tune from i-Tunes.

polrbehr

I used to hate the idea of texting as well, but it does occasionally have its' merits, at least for me as a business owner.

For instance, if I need to get in touch with one of my staff at an odd hour (it happens), rather than call them, I'll simply text them and ask for them to call me ASAP. I've found that most people will respond to/receive texts before they'll ever check a voice mail message. Same works for them if they need to contact me.

Also, I have gotten in the habit of requiring that my people text me to let me know that a particular job is complete; now I have a record of who did what for a given week. Makes for good recordkeeping when it comes to paying people or sending invoices out. At the end of the month, I purge my inbox from 2 months ago. Simple.

All this for $9.95 per month. And it's deductible:D.

Toolfan66

Texting SUCKS!!!!! and having a wife that talks on the phone to her mom 20 times a day SUCKS as well, and to who ever else she can talk to. somebody that talks on the phone for hours a day just to talk about nothing is just as bad.

inspiredsports

My wife and I trade a few texts a day, and it is a good way to alert me dinner's ready when my tunes are cranked in the man cave .

My kids are 14, 16, 18, 20 and I provide their phones so I see all of the counts. There is little variance between the 14yr old boy and the older girls monthly texting. The 2 eldest girls are in collage, and the younger two in high school. All are 3.4 to 3.8 GPA students. There is never a month our texts are below 30,000, and as I said, my wife and I account for about 500 of those.

29,500 / 4 children / 30.5 days per month = 242 texts per child per day.

They sleep sometimes, so I estimate the send 1 text every 2 minutes they are awake !! :eek:

ND13

I hate texting. Have to do it on occasion. To me, it's like regressing back to the telegraph, just wireless.

Bob is spot on.

brettw22

My issue with pricing is they get the cost of a text going and coming. So if I send a message to a friend and they reply to me, the cell company's have dinged 4x for that transmission (me to send, him to receive, then him to send and me to receive).

It's a scam in SOOOOO many ways it's not even funny.

There's really no difference between that and Blackberry's.......except you can send more than 160 characters with the BB's and the like. But they are also charging $40-50 a month for a data plan, so they're probably making even more with that.

bruss

For the most part I dont want to talk on the phone. Its a pain in the ****. People get side tracked and go off on tangents. Texting is all about info. where you at, whos there, ill meet you here, meetings cancelled etc..

Kex

bruss wrote: »

For the most part I dont want to talk on the phone. Its a pain in the ****. People get side tracked and go off on tangents. Texting is all about info. where you at, whos there, ill meet you here, meetings cancelled etc..

Exactly true! It's also similar in use to a Blackberry sometimes, without having to pay for a data plan, with more limitations obviously (length of message, attachments etc.). You get written messages without having to start your computer or be at your desk to check e-mail.

zingo

I pay the $20 a month for unlimited texts. It's mostly for my wife, but I have learned the texting system and it can be quiet handy at times.

obieone

ND13 wrote: »

I hate texting. Have to do it on occasion. To me, it's like regressing back to the telegraph, just wireless.

Bob is spot on.

+1!!! It seems like more work than it's worth. I think voice dialing is the easiest form of communicating. Push a button ONCE, say a name, and bang, you're either talking to another human being, or leaving a voice mail.
I just believe that evolution should make our lives easier?

Kex

obieone wrote: »

+1!!! It seems like more work than it's worth. I think voice dialing is the easiest form of communicating. Push a button ONCE, say a name, and bang, you're either talking to another human being, or leaving a voice mail.
I just believe that evolution should make our lives easier?

Actually, it's not that bad. Some of the predictive spelling software I used (Nokia and Motorola most - Nokia was superb) was so good that it was easier to type on a phone keypad than on a normal keyboard. For example, only four keystrokes, instead of eight, to type "keyboard" and one keystroke to accept and move on to the next word using "_".

I also prefer reading text messages to picking up voice messages: no menus to navigate and no need to find the correct "replay" key if you need to write something down (the message remains on the screen until you're ready). Also no problems if picking up messages in a noisy environment.

I guess it just depends on preferences, like many things, but I'll still never use it while they still charge for reception, not just for sending. Like I said: I think it's rude to make somebody else to pay to receive my message.

For those that are into this, BTW, I think Blackberry predictive software is not very clever (using wifey's Pearl for e-mail), since it still seems to require the same number of keystrokes as there are letters in the intended word: it does not seem to attempt to predict beyond the number of keys already pressed. You do not get the same economy of strokes as you do with other versions of the software.

Midnite Mick

I love texting...but also always loved email. Hate talking on the phone.

But I am not really all that personable.:)

Sherardp

I text, it helps break up the boredom in meetings. I too hate talking on the phone 24/7.

SKsolutions

If you have a client or friend or boss that just won't shut up, texting is a lifesaver.
I've saved measurable hours by texting. Stick and move, drop the bomb, and move on. Very business friendly.

Hobbyguy

Isn't all of this basically texting?

Ron-P

I text a lot more then call, it's so much easier.

Music Joe

Hobbyguy wrote: »

Isn't all of this basically texting?

Bingo this is the winner.


Texting is handy around Dr. offices and hospitals,

dorokusai

I like texting because I dislike most fleshlings in person.

MrNightly

Ya, I use about 3000 a month, and it's a way of life. I have unlimited texts for free with my plan on Sprint and my wife uses about 5000 a month as well.

To say someone is a 13 year old girl for texting is just silly to me. I can communicate EXTREMELY well using complete sentences and words on text message and it's a great technology.

Why is dialing a person and making a phone call a better way to communicate? I think what we have is a bunch of old men who aren't up on the modern way of life posting in this forum! Twenty years ago, people called people stupid for thinking about having a phone in your car... who would ever need to have a phone in the car? It rings enough at the house, we leave to get away from it. My folks turned down owning air space in Dallas, TX 20 years ago, because they thought that nobody would ever want mobile phones! Man, did they miss the boat on that one?!?

Times change, and texting is one of them. I can text at about 70 words a minute, without looking. And everything is spelled right. And that is on my personal phone. On my blackberry, it's even faster and better!

Bring on Texting... and the next technology that comes out that improves on it!