aaron c beals

i realize that it might be perceived as mildly unpatriotic to post an article on Inauguration Day that slams several of the largest US businesses, but i cannot sit idly by and let this go unremarked upon. after 5 years as a Sprint PCS customer (way back in the day), i made the switch to Verizon Wireless, mainly because almost everyone i knew was already on Verizon, and if i followed suit, i wouldn’t be charged for calls to them. later, when text messaging became popular, VZW offered free texting to other VZW customers, so that was an added bonus. the downside was that they charged you 10 cents per incoming and outgoing text with members of other networks (that price has since become 25 cents). eventually they provided plan add-ons through which you could pay for 500 out-of-network messages for $10/month, lowering the cost to 2 cents per message. but of course, you had to use all the messages or the per-message price effectively increases… and heaven forbid you go over, because then you’re back to paying $0.25 each. i put up with this nonsense, their lack of a GSM network, absolutely terrible selection of phones, and absurdly high data plan rates all because they have the best coverage in the area and essentially give me a free phone every 2 years. oh, and because the other US carriers aren’t much better.

and then, like salt in an already festering wound, comes the news that these wireless carriers don’t actually have much in the way of overhead (costs) for these precious text messages that they dole out at 4 for a dollar:

article in the NYTimes