Texting Teens Generating OMG Phone Bills 888
theodp writes "Last month, Washington high school junior Sofia Rubenstein used 6,807 text messages, which, at a rate of 15 cents apiece for most of them, pushed her family's Verizon Wireless bill over $1,100. She and other teens are finding themselves in hot water after their families get blindsided with huge phone bills thanks to hefty a la carte text messaging charges." Use of SMS in the US doubled from 2005 to 2006.
Yep (Score:2, Informative)
Unlimited SMS.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SMS spamming? (Score:3, Informative)
QTFA (Score:2, Informative)
Re:15 cents each?! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:A $1,100 phone bill? TSNF! (Score:4, Informative)
I've actually heard of kids in middle and high school who use SMS and IM so much that they legitimately don't know how to spell words like "you", "your/you're", and will use internet abbreviations (lol, idk, etc.) in school papers.
It scares the shit out of me that people think that's funny, and are apparently willing to pay so that their kids can do more of it.
Re:Why not use IM client that uses data instead? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Three letters: WTF ??!? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Three letters: WTF ??!? (Score:4, Informative)
In classic GSM the SMS travels as a part of the paging messages and the amount of bandwidth available to it is actually quite low. So by standard law of supply and demand its price cannot be expected to be very low. Network in classic GSM simply does not have the capacity to handle lots of SMS hence it is not going to become very cheap without resorting to more modern technology.
From some point onwards (forgot which standard level) you can use GPRS for SMS which vastly improves the capacity, but it is not either not enabled or not the default setting in most operators and phones at the moment.
So there is an underlying economical reason for the relatively high price of TXT compared to voice as well as the fact that TXT is charged differently from other data. At least in GSM. No idea about whatever Verizon uses.
Parent is correct (Score:3, Informative)
Data services on mobile networks (Score:5, Informative)
I used to work in the Engineering department of a mobile service provider, so the information here may be somewhat out of date, but the principles are probably still the same today.
In general, mobile communications networks don't use the same channel for everything. For example, you might have several frequencies available, use one as a control channel (registering handsets as they move around; handshaking to set up calls, etc.) and then have several channels used for voice data.
Now, it's not unusual for small data messages, such as SMS, to be carried on the control channel rather than voice channels. That means there is much less capacity available for such messages than for voice, because they have only a single channel, and they are also in competition with all the network registration traffic, etc.
Moreover, the testing overhead for data messages can be higher than voice calls. Certainly for the network I worked on, every call type was made between every possible combination of approved handsets and checked by a real person before new software went live. (Yes, that did take months.)
So in fact, from a technical point of view, it's entirely unfair to compare voice and data transactions. That probably doesn't matter in practice, of course, because prices will no doubt be set by what the market will bear rather than what it costs to provide the service. That usually means voice and basic texting are relatively cheap these days, but things like photo messaging (or whatever the bonus feature du jour is) tend to cost more.
Re:Two words: (Score:2, Informative)
This may or may not seem like a good idea to you, but it is the thought process that was applied. The practical upshot is that US plans feature a certain number of "primetime minutes" - minutes of phone usage between (typically) 7 am and 9 pm, M-F. Nights and weekends are free and unlimited. The network to which the destination belongs only matters if it's your own carrier; most higher-cost plans feature unlimited in-network mobile-to-mobile at all times of day or night. Otherwise, landline or mobile, it doesn't matter who you call, or who calls you. You have those minutes, you use them as you choose. With any major carrier, virtually all plans provide no-roaming service across the country.
Example: my wife's phone plan is $35/mo. For that she gets 300 primetime minutes and unlimited nights and weekends. She can make calls from anywhere in the US, to anywhere in the US, for no additional charge. This is in large measure what makes the system so palatable to Americans; for charges which are either similar to or less than total monthly charges anywhere else, we get a hugely flexible system. A GSM phone from the UK may operate in Greece, but not for the same price as if you were sitting in London.
Re:Two words: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Two words: (Score:4, Informative)
My parents kept me inline (spanked) because I lied that had consequences for other people. You call it abuse, I call it a lesson learned and I deserved it. I would have resented them if I had to take drugs because I lied. I was really too young to know how to think that far ahead as to what a little lie could do so a spanking was well deserved. That I understood.
I never got spanked in school. The kids who got spanked in school either straightened up and never got spanked again or were those 'problem' kids that got suspended and spanked habitually. I can say that most of those habitual 'problem' kids are in the category of dead or in jail as my schoolyard friend and I kind of keep tabs on the news of the town we grew up in.
I'm going to say that those habitualy spanked kids were always problem kids that grew into problem adults. They entered a life of crime because of their environment and personal choices, not because some teacher actually cared to give their asses a whup nor did they remember the time they got whipped in the 6th grade the first night in the slammer.
Not everyone has a living home and that is sad. That isn't my problem to fix as I can't fix it nor can you nor can anyone that wants to regulate that 'spanking' is child abuse. There are people who are unfit to be parents but you can't stop the laws of nature.
If you decide to have children, there is a period of time of 18 months that really tests your patience. It is known as the terrible twos [wikipedia.org]. Parents that beat their child during that stage are child abusers. Once you can reason with them, then they can pick their own punishment. Sometimes you have to get to the lowest common denominator to make a point. Time-out doesn't work when they break your $2000 HDTV screen when you've repeatedly told them to stop throwing the ball in the house.
Re:Two words: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Two words: (Score:1, Informative)
I'm so relieved to see your post, and to see that its modded up as insightful in this discussion that is a tangent, but relevant to the discussion of the original topic.
I am an advocate for breaking down stigmas and stereotypes about mental health. There are too many misconceptions that Ritalin is an easy answer for ADD. (For clarity, ADD was renamed and so some people are using the term ADHD-Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.) There are too many misconceptions about how many youth have clinical ADD. Its easier to give kids drugs or draw some sort of line and say this is how you parent, but easy isn't necessarily right for everyone.
I had a really great source to cite that would have backed up your post that has unfortunately gone offline in the last month. It contained documents about how there were preschools and private schools in California several years ago that required kids to be on Ritalin and similar drugs to get in. Mental health and youth advocacy groups lobbied and worked with the CA legislature to pass public policy to help end this kind of extreme {I'm at a loss of what to call this}. I can provide a link to CHADD's public policy page [chaddnorcal.org] which shows some more localized efforts. I'm also going to post the information about ADHD/ADD from NIMH [nih.gov] because I think its very comprehensive about a misunderstood disorder. The best way to treat ignorance is with education.
My sister is an ADA for juvenile defenders in a large metropolitan area, her work backs up your statements too. Thanks for posting advocacy and tolerance!
Re:Two words: (Score:4, Informative)
After writing my comment I read up on the laws regarding corporal punishment around the world. The UK law is reasonable and I could probably agree to that. From wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
An amendment to the Children Act 2004 to ban smacking by parents was defeated by 424 votes to 75 in the House of Commons; however, an amendment to ban parents from smacking their children hard enough to leave a mark was accepted by 284 votes to 208, and came into force in January 2005.
Re:Two words: (Score:3, Informative)