AT&T Eliminating $10 Text Messaging Plan for New Customers

The ridiculous state of wireless data (tethering, sms) has finally driven me to get rid of my smartphone. Well done AT&#38;T/Verizon.<p>I am:<p>* Porting my number to Google Voice.<p>* Getting a voip "landline."<p>* Getting a new number with the cheapest possible wireless plan + dumbphone. Sprint still not evil?<p>* Routing my calls using Google Voice to the landline/dumbphone, depending on where I am.<p>Frankly, I'm sick of paying $120/mo and getting fucked around every corner. I dont NEED this you know; the non-phone part of this phone is a convenience, not a necessity.<p>I'll let the market/regulators figure this out. In the meantime, I'll be fine not checking my email every five minutes and staring at yet another screen when I'm not in the house/office.<p>If anybody has recommendations re: my plan of action, I'm all ears.

Like I mentioned on Twitter, if you don't like the new plans, you can always switch to T-Mobile. Oh, wait...

I wonder if the impending release of iMessage has something to do with this. With so much iPhone to iPhone messaging no longer counting towards text messaging, a lot of users would probably drop from the unlimited plan to the $10 plan - if it was still available.

Here in Argentina, I pay about US$10 for about 180 text messages per month. I say "about" because I'm on a prepaid plan; additional messages are about US$0.04 each.<p>Until recently, I could pay about US$4 plus the US$0.04, but they switched the SMS credit to expire after a month instead of after six months, so I have to buy a new SMS card every month.<p>(This also includes a limited amount of voice calling.)<p>It seems to me that a competitive market in a country like the US, where very few people have text-only plans, ought to make this service considerably cheaper than in Argentina. The marginal cost of delivering a text message is something like a thousand times lower.

This seems shortsighted to me. I'm already seeing non-tech friends using messaging apps that don't go over SMS - with the mass adoption of smart phones, this hopefully is the nail in the coffin for SMS.

From the title I thought it would be a goodwill gesture. "Text messages are so ubiquitous now, they should be a standard part of every phone plan."<p>Nope. Now the only option is $20 for unlimited texting.

I have a virign mobile plan here in the US: $25/month<p><pre><code> no contract 300 minutes unlimited texts 5GB/month of data(it gets slower but not stopped or overcharge after that) </code></pre> I use my phone mostly to coordinate hanging out, any long conversations happen at home where I have wifi and calls can be routed through gchat or skype on a laptop.<p>I'm not sure why its not more popular. Oh and I can tether.<p>NOTE: just checked and it looks like the plan is advertised as $35/mo now

Texting pricing is such a gigantic and well known scam that it's hard to have sympathy for its victims at this point in time. It's like a guy who keeps buying lemons from the same dishonest car salesmen and then asking why the guy is still in business. Um, he stays in business and gets away with this stuff because these people keep giving them money, that's how.

It really pisses me off that I can't opt out of receiving text messages. AT&#38;T charges me for text messages I didn't want from people I don't even know. The system should be changed so that only the people sending text messages pay.

Does iMessage automatically determine if the receiver is on an iOS device and then send your SMS without using your phone plan? Or do you have to know beforehand and then use a different app/route for your message?

That's disappointing since $10/1000 messages is a good price point IMO. The "cheapest" iPhone plan right now is $40/mo base, $10 for messages, and $15 for a pathetic 200mb of data. Going from $65/mo to $75/mo for essentially no benefit is really underwhelming.. maybe if they atleast bumped it up to 500mb of data, it wouldn't be so bad.

Easy enough to avoid, just use Google Voice and voila text messages are free, and unlimited (assuming you have a smartphone).

How much are messages when you don't have a plan? How many do you get for the $20 the unlimited plan would cost you?

How much will they charge you if you never want to receive or send a text message at all?<p>On Verizon, this was a $10 one-time charge.