It shouldn't be news that SMS charges are one of the biggest scams that is accepted as commonplace. Recently, a writer at Gizmodo wanted to highlight that fact, and ended up getting AT&T to admit that its SMS charges are absurd. Of course, in order to really incur those types of absurd charges, you'd have to put in a whole lot of work.
So, the story goes that Ryan Kearney at Gizmodo saw that AT&T charges $.50 per SMS while roaming (incidentally, all 4 major carriers in the U.S. charge the same rate on roaming SMS messages, so targeting AT&T was Kearney's idea). Kearney then decided to do a little math, and came up with the number $3.3 million per GB of data sent over SMS while roaming on AT&T. Kearney tweeted this information, and that's when the insanity started.
For a reason that we can't understand, an AT&T employee actually responded to Kearney's tweet to correct his math, saying, "actually 1 character in a msg equals abt 1 kb.1024KB=1MB..same conversion to GB-AT&T charges 19.97/mb or 120mb for $30 #fact".
Bad Twitter grammar aside, AT&T's response makes no sense on a number of levels. First, the math is still a little suspect because "1 character in a msg" should not equal 1kb. Also, AT&T forgot to mention that sending that amount of data via SMS is nearly impossible, and completely impractical.
Kearney attempted to take his information to its logical extreme, in calculating that it would cost $35 million to send an HD movie over SMS while roaming on AT&T (which isn't even possible). And, he also went for a more "realistic" angle, by saying that you could theoretically hit that 1GB of data via SMS mark by sending 7.7 million text messages. That's not quite impossible, but if you did send that many texts, we'd suggest you see a therapist rather than bothering AT&T's accounts department.
Michael Heller is known for his clear and informative articles on mobile technology. He explores important topics such as the rollouts of 5G networks and the advancements in mobile payments, offering readers insights into the evolving tech landscape.
Recommended Stories
Loading Comments...
COMMENT
All comments need to comply with our
Community Guidelines
Phonearena comments rules
A discussion is a place, where people can voice their opinion, no matter if it
is positive, neutral or negative. However, when posting, one must stay true to the topic, and not just share some
random thoughts, which are not directly related to the matter.
Things that are NOT allowed:
Off-topic talk - you must stick to the subject of discussion
Offensive, hate speech - if you want to say something, say it politely
Spam/Advertisements - these posts are deleted
Multiple accounts - one person can have only one account
Impersonations and offensive nicknames - these accounts get banned
Moderation is done by humans. We try to be as objective as possible and moderate with zero bias. If you think a
post should be moderated - please, report it.
Have a question about the rules or why you have been moderated/limited/banned? Please,
contact us.
FCC OKs Cingular\'s purchase of AT&T Wireless
Things that are NOT allowed: