| Tunnel Vision While I agree with the assessement that the bandwidth costs for GSM (and maybe even CDMA, I don't know how SMS works on that platform) is essentially $0 (the control channel has to be there anyway, sending SMS down it costs nothing), that's only part of the story. Carriers have to implement SMS systems that keep track of the messages, make sure they're delivered, etc, not to mention they have to have agreements with other carries to send and recieve messages between them. Is that worth $.20 or $.30 a message? I have no idea. As somebody else pointed out, they have plans that are significantly cheaper. My whole point is there is more to this than bandwidth costs and AT&T or anybody else does have costs associated with offering it. NEXTEL for instance utilizes a data channel to transfer their version of text messages, I have no idea why because the iDEN system and the phones are fully capable of using two way SMS messages.
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"Don't steal. The government hates competition." |
