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I go back to the days when Nextel was charging me $280 a month for 2500 minutes. Then it was Sprint and it was not much better. Last before my personal cellular usage crash it was AT&T, with whom my wife and I shared 2100 minutes and Unlimited Internet for $139 but for some reason our bill was always near $200 a month, with taxes and other fees.

I began my At&T service the day of the launch of the first i Phone At&T had a policy of not insuring any PDA phone of any type, so when one was stolen, twice, I had to pay $550 to replace my Blackberry Curve.

Over the course of my 22 month relationship we have averaged over $225 a month in fees. I finally collapsed under the strain of it all and we now have two Blackberry curves, locked to the AT&T network, and we owe them around $600. My annual costs were nearly $3000 a year for two phones.

I would go over my minutes and be charge unbelievably for this. I NEVER could understand why my carrier could not simply inform me when I was about to go over. I’m a geek. The programming is pretty easy. I could never understand, after my phone was stolen, why is was that that person could simply open an AT&T account and keep on trucking without penalty. I would get periodic email notifications of its being in use. The ein number was obviously identical. I again lost hundreds and the major carrier won thousands more.

My story is one of horrible victimization by the major carriers, made even more glaringly true by the offerings of Boost Mobile. I thank the deities for them.
And frankly, may the wind be at their back, for illustrating how it is excellent business to stand as one of the first truly customer-centered operators in this heretofore horribly predatory industry.

Long Live Boost. I want a franchise immediately!
by Robert E. Lee (Oak Park, Illinois) (not verified) on 2/21/09 at 3:10 am | reply

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Did you ever wonder why you can buy any item at best buy, circuit city, staples, etc and it’s ALWAYS the same price? They will all match each other if one tries to outprice another. So in the end they sort of hover at a set price and nobody dips below it. Cell carriers could attempt to price each other out of competition but what would be the point? There are so few competitors why not set a price and stick w/it. Better each carrier makes a little than nobody making anything.

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A relatively new find of massive, grand proportions in the Gulf of Mexico is, by itself, enough to considerably lower dependence on foreign crude. At least its production could bridge the time-gap until alternative, clean energy can take dominance over oil and coal.

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Before BigOil goes and stakes further claims, they should exhaust their already existing and congressionally-authorized (but untouched) access to _33 MILLION SQUARE MILES_ of available off-shore drilling sites.

Just a thought for the sober among us.

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I’m an upper level executive for a hospital group in Columbus Ohio. I find it hard to believe that you own 20 hospitals. If that is true you need to stay off this site and figure out how to deal with the growing level of self pay patients. That is why everyone elses health insurance goes up every year. Quit worring about text messages and this site and start helping to get healthcare back under control. You might want to google what all we’ve done here to make ER’s a better and not have people use them for their Dr’s office.

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Increased nuclear: At least 15 years and will cost the Federal Government around $5.0 Billion

Natural Gas: Same boat as oil. Even if we increase harvesting of natural gas we don’t have an adequate natural gas power production infrastructure. That takes building more power generators – Better off taking that money and building Nuclear or Wind.

Wind: Our best bet right now. It produces a lot of power fairly cheap and can be built and connected to our national power infrastructure very rapidly (1 – 2 years per site).

Solar: Expensive, and not very efficient for the cost. In 5 – 10 years it will be good for home use to help offset the power consumed from the national power grid which can allow us to ramp down the use of oil and coal.

To help lower gas prices right now, we should invade Iran and make it the 51st state. We can pave it from border to border and build nothing but Walmarts and Oil Refineries and build pipelines directly from Iran to NJ. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be tarred and feathered then drawn, quartered and disemboweled and then burned with thermite.

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Umm no!! Messaging is not using the same data as for web browsing.

SMS “short messaging services” is digetly transmited but its not using anytype of data sevice to transmit the message. It’s related more to numeric paging or even caller I’d then it is to internet service.

Now MMS “multimedia messaging services” does use data but in its simplest form and is still not even close to being the same type of data being used to browse the mobile web.

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Solution One: All companies just need to charge let’s say anywhere from $15 to $30 extra a month to make unlimited messages part of each of their rate plans getting rid of those nasty $.20 per message overcharges . No complaints right?

Solution Two: All companies need to stop offering messaging packages and just charge $.05 to $.15 for each message sent or recieved. Fixes the issue right?

With all wireless providers offering messaging packages of one type or an other overage charges have become standardised. Who is to say that this is wrong or a bad thing. Having industry standards often dont take anything away from the free market. Just like 2yr contracts, 1 year equiptment warrantee, 30 days buyers remorse period have became standard so have overage charges, but there still a lot of diffrentace between what each company offers its not jepordise the free market.

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@ all the gas complainers. He doesn’t need to send a letter to the gas companies they have already said that the cost to refine the oil is higher the barrels are more expensive. Get it through your thick skulls we need to stop worrying about oil and start looking at some other solution. Other countries are used to paying more and now we have to until we have a better solution.

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that mesurea alone would spure competition

@ backbeat the FDA is corrupt the drug companis are in bed with em

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but what has happened is the exact opposite. Instead of charging a fair price for each message, the carriers raise the per SMS price and then create a package that seems like a deal. In reality all that they are doing is guaranteeing a $5, $10, $15 or $20 of extra revenue per month. Because the casual SMS user is afraid of using more than 30 a month.

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American society and American business has changed since 1862. Cause & Effect, in effect, once again. Cost controls and controlled marketing are actions of the Agency since its inception as authorized by its original mandate as well as and under Title XXI. Is it every person’s best friend? Not always, but on this matter, you are simply badly off course.

This is really not a road you want to go down.

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true free market?? no such thing!!! if there was such a thing we wouldn’t have order. this is a cut-throat world.

secondly, when there is collusion or a monopoly how can there be a correction???
think before you use words like “always”
need examples of monopolies??? AT&T, MSFT, Look how powerful Wal-Mart is becoming. Let them do whatever they want and lets see how well your “true free market” works. and then you will really see how out of balance the system will get. go back to school my friend. theory goes so far in the real world.

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http://www.mobilemessaging2.com/2008/01/29/blogger-computes-the-true-price-of-an-sms/

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