Unlimited texting plans are about $10 iirc. If you can't justify the cost of a monthly texting plan then you're paying < $10, which is hardly ridiculous.
It's ridiculous because if the cell companies can afford to allow you to send 1000s of texts for $10/month, then:
* Why does it cost $0.15/text to send/receive? 1000 texts at that rate is $150.00.
* Why do they charge for incoming text and then make it so hard to block incoming texts?
* There are perverse incentives. The cell carriers have no incentive to block/deter SMS spam on their network. Actually, they are incentivized to allow it.
* In the US, on some carriers, it's ~ $0.25 - $0.35 to send/receive texts without a plan, whereas unlimited is usually ~$10/month.
* The cell carriers want people to pay a standard rate because it makes their accounting calculations/projections easier.
* The cell carriers want people to pay a standard rate because they probably would pay less on a pay-as-you-go plan. (Though if people started taxing the SMS system, they would quickly reverse course and start talking about people being 'SMS hogs.')
My parents, on Verizon, have a family plan. Due to business partners who insist on texting all the time, they have unlimited texting added to the account. $30/month, across two phones.
AT&T, as has been reported ad infinitum, is eliminating their $10 per 1000 texts per month plan. Unlimited texts, now your only option, is $20/month (I have no clue about their family plans).
Given that the FCC, FTC, and whoever spend zero time looking into this, I'd say the consumer is simply and increasingly screwed.
As I understand it, text messages started as a side effect. Someone noticed that there was spare room in the status messages flying between towers and phones, and thought, hmm, what can we do with that? (Maybe I'm wrong, but that's how I recall it.)
Yes it's overpriced, but the logic of "paying per use would cost more than buying a package" doesn't hold up, because it's how most things work.
If you rent a single DVD it will cost more per film than if you get an unlimited monthly plan. If you buy a single song on iTunes it will cost more per song than if you buy the album. If you rent a car for the weekend it will cost more per day than if you buy the car and use it all the time.
The main cost is the infrastructure, hence why the more you buy, the cheaper it can go.
