It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them - Alfred Adler
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Congress investigates SMS charges
THE US CONGRESS wants to know why SMS charges have doubled over the last three years and how telcos can justify sticking it to punters in such an evil way.
Sen Herb Kohl, chair of the Antitrust Subcommittee in the Senate Judiciary Committee, has penned a letter to the four major wireless carriers, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile, asking them to explain the dramatic price increases for SMS
Kohl reckons that analysts say these increased rates do not appear to be justified by any increases in the costs associated with text messaging services.
He said the cost increases seem to be a result of the decrease in competition, and an increase in market power, among the top four telcos.
Mobile operators have been laughing all the way to the bank with the charges they have levied.
After a period of market consolidation, the four major carriers left currently serve more than 90 per cent of wireless subscribers in the US.
Kohl thinks that this has contributed to this doubling of text messaging rates over the last three years.
He has told the to prove how their respective text messaging pricing structures differs from those of their competitors, along with evidence of what factors led to price increases. µ
L'Inq
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I'm not sure how it is a rip off. I pay an extra 5 bucks a month for unlimited SMS and MMS. If I didn't have it, I wouldn't use it, and if I wasn't using it I probably wouldn't be calling my friends/family as often as I text. 

The way I look at it, having paid that 5 bucks I'm using my phone more often, and am able to save money because I pay for less minutes a month because I can text instead. The amount of pictures I send/receive more than makes up for the cost.
Here in India one can send 120 SMS for Rs. 31 i.e. 70 Cents US. The Telecom Ombudsman TRAI sets affordable rates for services and thus prevents rape of common man.
Our shortsighted Facist overlords brought this about by allowing the massive consolidation in the first place, now they try to look like a hero by defending the common man.
SMS uses the fact that all cellphones must return to a base frequency to receive quality of service signals.
that means it uses the same airtime that MUST be used for cellphones to work.

that means it doesn't use ANY extra bandwidth (btw, 64kbps? HA! it's about 6 times lower than that!!) that is measured in airtime timeslots in cellular applications.

so, the only costs are for the network devices, which already support SMS anyway...
A two minuted phone conversation uses about 1,000,000 bytes of data across your phone carriers network. (I based this on a 64k bps bit rate)

A two sentence text message uses about 100 bytes of data across you phone carriers network.

You decide if you are getting shafted by the phone carriers or not.
Large corporations needlessly charging more for a service that costs them next to nothing to sustain?!?!?! Say it isn't so!!!!

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Of course they are gouging their users. The US govt. encourages them to do this by giving corporations a break when the lawsutis start flying. Congress let this issue go unchecked for years and now they want to save face in an election year.
Ever since it was pointed out after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans how much less bandwidth texting using I refuse to pay extra for something that saves telco's money.
Last time I tried text messaging with a USA network I discovered that they had the network interconnect issues Europe banished way back in last century!

Basically if you're on network A, don't try to send messages to network B. If you're in another country trying to send messages to US network A B C or D, good luck. They might get it.. They might not... Same roll of the dice will apply to their reply.