By 
Fan favorite AT&T is about to make a move many wont be too happy with. Seems ‘ol AT&T will soon give the axe to their $10 dollar/1,000 text messaging plan, leaving customers with no other option but their $20 unlimited messaging plan. It’s ballsy. It’s unconventional. It’s AT&T.
The change will go into effect on August 21st and if you opt for the pay-as-you-go messaging rates it will cost you $.20 cents per SMS/$.30 MMS. Current $10 SMS users should be grandfathered in with no problems but if you fancy yourself a “light texter” — you may want to sign that AT&T contract within the next 3 days.
[Via Engadget]
Chris, have you ever watched dateline msnbc? :P
My favorite show is “To Catch A Predator” =)
Hi, I’m Chris Hansen and I like rape.
Gotta love price hikes.
Yay at&t! Way to stay #1 in our hearts.
Chris, This short article was hilarious. You are a great addition to this site. “It’s ballsy. It’s unconventional. It’s AT&T.”
You obviously didn’t read my Dog Fighting post… o_O
The SMS cash cow just never seems to die… I really only have it for the people I know, that don’t have data plans, and that list is shrinking.. It’s easily replaced by email and social networking sites.. eventually it won’t be needed except by those that just “have to” vote on American Idol..
This isnt just going to make people mad, its going to lose them money. There are alot of people that wont go unlimited and just drop messaging all together. With them struggling to fix their data network, they should be offering more options not less.
I currently use the $5.00 250 text option on Verizon and I never go over. I usually use about 200 a month. I don’t know what i’d do if it went up. That’s ridiculous
I would just drop messaging and block messages. If you don’t have email or gtalk, then I probably could stand to miss your txt.
…
Unless you’re over your data quota.
Sprint: Text for free.
And it will only get worse if t moble is allowed to be bought by At&t I hope that merger fails as we the customers lose as you see they are starting already
“Unlimited messaging plans are an excellent value…”? By who’s twisted math? If you sit down and figure what you’re getting for that $20 as a fraction of what you’re paying for the voice side of your plan, it’s obvious that it’s just a money-grabbing scam.
SMS is data. Consider it part of the “data” plan otherwise you’re being deceptive and criminal. Until then, I’ll continue to use Google Voice and give this SMS plan nonsense the finger it deserves.
Actually SMS is not data as it does not use the data network but instead uses the voice network.
That being said, SMS is a freebee for all carriers as it only uses available voice bandwidth and if all voice channels are in use on your tower, it will sit in the queue until bandwidth frees up. SMS is a gold mine for carriers as there is no extra cost on their end yet they charge you more for 160 characters of text than they do for an actual phone call.
An advantage to having the Unlimited texting Plan is that you can call ANY Mobile Phone on ANY Network and it WILL NOT impact your monthly minutes. So for example if you have A 450 minute plan and Unlimited texting, you can call Sprint, Verizon, etc UNLIMITEDLY and use your 450 minutes for landlines. This also applies to Unlimited Family Text Messaging as well.
How does this move help the merger? I mean these regulatory agencies can’t be so blind and stupid to not see that people on T-Mobile will go from the least expensive provider to the most expensive. AT&T is usually first and then VZW eventually does the same thing. Why? Because they are both huge and because they can.
AT&T needs a new slogan. How’s this:
“Welcome to the new AT&T. Get screwed…with your pants on.”
Here’s a quote from AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson back in May:
“Some have suggested that the extraordinary consumer and economic benefits would come at the cost of reduced competition and increased prices. That is simply not true. All T-Mobile customers will have the choice of retaining their existing rate plans or switching to an AT&T rate plan, and they will thus have more choices than before, including a state-of-the-art LTE service that T-Mobile had no clear path to offer on a standalone basis…”
So much for giving customers more choices and not increasing prices.Horse puckey I say. Horse puckey.
Use WhatsApp and safe yourself the $20 almost everyone has a smartphone these days make sure all your friends know about it.