Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: neilep on 29/07/2010 12:22:46
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Approaching nothing nice little earner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS)
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Oh My gawwwd !!
I never realised I sent so many texts !!......thank ewe imatfaal......I guess for 2010 we can add a few extra billion !
sheesh !!...it's easy money !!..presumably making a phone call must incur the smallest trivial cost to the provider too !!..sheesh !!!
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The issue with a telecoms provider is that they build a big system of pipes which is really expensive, but they have very low running costs. So if you already have the system then texting is really cheap to implement, but if you had to build a mobile mast infrastructure for it, then it would be stupidly expensive. A text really doesn't use much of the available bandwidth, so in one sense it is cheap, but then again it wouldn't work without several billion quid's worth of kit already set up..
So they charge what people are willing to pay, as what a text costs the telco is very hard to work out - the big costs being the towers and subsidising the phone sales, neither of which scale with the number of texts you use.. or even very strongly with the number of calls you make.
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I think Dave has it right. BTW, a voice call does actually consume a lot more network bandwith than a text message (which consumes almost none at all) so , if the price you pay was really related to the actual cost, voice would be a lot more expensive than text.
However, people seem to be willing to shell out a lot of money for text. Personally, I can't be ars bothered with it.
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Dave is right about the investment and the difference between marginal and overall costs - however much of the current hoohaa is centred on some very divergent pricing models. 'They' charge the sheep 0.15gbp per text - a different 'they' charge me 0.75gbp per month for practically unlimited texts (2500). it is the old story of the low-usage personal purchaser subsidising the discounts given to the high-usage business purchaser; sorry veering into politics.
Geezer - I was very dismissive of texts, but I am coming round to them. They represent a new method of communication; mobile-phone and landline are obviously connected, the e-mail and snail-mail are very similar, but what is the previous analogue to the text? At 0.15gbp per text; forget it. But when marginal price gets close to marginal cost gets closer to zero; then they become useful, and a new manner of communication that is worth trying.
Matthew
Matthew
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Thanks Dave, geezer and imatfaal for your comments and very useful info.
For the record I do actually pay right now £10 a month for unlimited texts, 200 minutes talk time and unlimted internet on the phone. I consoiderthis a very good deal. Looking at some other tarrifsI notice that the most dominant price for a text is 10p...but I've seen 15p too.
Thanks again peeps.
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Geezer - I was very dismissive of texts, but I am coming round to them. They represent a new method of communication; mobile-phone and landline are obviously connected, the e-mail and snail-mail are very similar, but what is the previous analogue to the text? At 0.15gbp per text; forget it. But when marginal price gets close to marginal cost gets closer to zero; then they become useful, and a new manner of communication that is worth trying.
Imat,
I'm very dismissive of texts because I had a (insert personal expletive of choice here) Blackberry chained to my body for six years [;D]
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Geezer - as good a reason as you are likely to find. I dumped my blackberry because it was far too reliable and stopped me ever being really out of touch. With a blackberry everyone at work knew they could reliably contact me and they did; however they all readily believe the "my iphone was playing up" and now tend to leave me alone.
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Has anyone in the UK heard of this Giff Gaff network which is supposed to be a community, SIM only, network centred on the web. I think there are others like this too. Apparently they pay customers to market for them and also give them money for doing technical help on the web. I like the idea of it but like Dave says the infrastructure has to be there in the first place so although this looks like it is free of the big companies it has to run on an established network. It turns out that it uses O2 and that O2 pat rolled it in the first place. Giff Gaff claims that O2 keep out of their business but who knows. The charges are comparable with supermarket brands.
Are there any SIM only community networks in the US or anywhere else that are totally free of the big companies?
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Telecommunications companies do their best to give services to customers in a not costly manner. Calls are more expensive than texts. But if there is something important you want to say through call, you would not mind the cost at all.
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It is an interesting information and require to know the cost of the text messages to the company. I am really appreciated to share your valuable information.