While many carriers offer unlimited SMS text plans, much of the world uses phone plans which charge per SMS text message sent.
An SMS text message can contain at most 160 characters, or 160 bytes of data.
At $0.05c USD per SMS, that’s at least $0.0003125 per byte
$0.32 per kilobyte
$327.68 per megabyte
$335,544.32 per gigabyte
At least $335,544.32 per gigabyte
A typical 2 gigabyte per month data plan is $25. An unlimited, infinity gigabyte, data plan at most $30 / month in Taiwan.
At $0.05 / SMS, $30 is 600 SMS.
$25 for 2GB is the same as 13.4 million SMS.
At these rates, it’s almost no wonder that phone credits are often used as a currency in many developing countries!
If this isn’t information arbitrage to the grossest degree, or an orders of magnitude “ghetto tax” then what is it?
Now, consider:
A circle of friends with smartphones and unlimited data plans can send unlimited IM messages, pictures, even video to each other for zero marginal cost. Sometimes unlimited data plans include unlimited text, but not always.
In the later case, receiving an SMS from a friend and knowing that the only way that friend can get a reply is via SMS is a burden. What’s a friend to do? Of course you’re going to reply, but at a rate of $335,544.32 per gigabyte.
The best we can do for now is: “Friends don’t let friends use SMS.”
If I get an SMS from a friend whom I know has a smartphone, I fire up IMO.im app and reply to them using GTalk, Skype, Facebook IM, or if I can’t find them there, I find them on What’s App or Kik and reply that way. This conditions them to stop sending me SMS. If I find they aren’t on any of those, I reply to the SMS with SMS and include: “Hey, get What’s App or get on IM”. For everyone else, I happily reply with SMS, but will note to softly suggest the benefits of getting out of the 90s and getting some sort of Internet enabled phone when I see them.
One more thing:
“Nielsen found that teens send or receive an average of 3,339 texts per month. Those between the ages of 13 and 17 send or receive an average of 4,050 texts per month, far more than any other age group. The next closest group was 18-24 year olds, who send an average of 1,630 text messages per month. Those figures are both greater than the average amount of texts sent during the same quarter in 2009.”