Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

macrumors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 55 posts

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

#13

Post by whichdan »

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.

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

#14

Post by runjake »

martingordon wrote: post #8

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

I am literally doing so during lunch today. I've been debating this for the past month and made my final decision last night.

Luckily, I'm out of contract on AT&T, so I don't have an ETF to pay. My only issue is deciding which phone to go for.

I'm trying to decide between the Defy, $299 off-contract and durable, Sensation, and G2x.

I'll probably through Cyanogenmod on whatever I buy ASAP, can anyone comment on the above phones? I'm particularly wondering if a Cyanogenmodded Defy will meet my responsiveness/battery life needs. I don't play games, I just hate laggy UIs, which unfortunately seem to plague Android.

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

#15

Post by runjake »

madh wrote: post #7
MattLaroche wrote: post #5

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.

Devil's advocate: Perhaps promoting unlimited SMS can mitigate the move to iMessage and equivalents? SMS at current prices is going to go. It can't compete with internet-based solutions like iMessage and BBM, especially in regions with many small countries like Europe or Asia where international fees can be quite restrictive. (This is why Skype became so popular in Europe.)

Perhaps promoting unlimited SMS can mitigate the move to iMessage and equivalents?

iMessage still uses SMS whenever you send a message to somebody with a non-iOS 5 device. I don't know about you, but I communicate with tons of people who don't have iPhones or even data plans.

This move is ridiculous gouging whatever way you look at it.

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

#16

Post by goatforce5 »

whichdan wrote: post #13

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.

Or, it seems, 20c per message if you chose to pay for what you use.

20c per message would be a better deal than $20/month for me.

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

#17

Post by monochromatic »

huntero wrote: post #3

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.

This is the first I've heard of iMessage. Pretty much everyone I know has an iphone, so I think I'm going to be dropping down to the pay-as-you-go text plan once iOS 5 drops.

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

#18

Post by bugsy »

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.

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

#19

Post by kragen »

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.

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.

(This also includes a limited amount of voice calling.)

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.

Post reply on HN