After Sprint Nextel and Cingular raised their SMS text messaging fees, Verizon Wireless is doing it too. Starting March 1, the price Verizon Wireless charges you for sending text messages from North America, and for receiving text messages from anywhere, will be $0.15 — a 50% increase from the current price of $0.10 to send or receive messages. That brings Verizon’s pricing to the same level as Sprint Nextel and Cingular. Bulk messaging plans cost the same as before.
The only major U.S. carrier left that charges just $0.10 per message is T-Mobile — so if you’re a heavy user of SMS text messaging, you know which service provider is your best bet. Just keep in mind that SMS prices aren’t set in stone, and T-Mobile could raise its prices too.
Of course, if you’re a heavy texter — regardless of which carrier you’re using — you’ll want to sign up for a bulk messaging plan, which will give you several hundred messages per month, or even an unlimited number of text messages, for a flat monthly fee.
More info: Verizon Wireless joins SMS price increase club (MobileTracker)
Just use sites like jygy.com where you can text anyone in the US for free? not to mention the other cool texting features you cant do anywhere… just a thought.. fight the fees!
Peekamo has just started limiting sms. I got support message this morning from peekamo saying only 5 sms’s a month to phone. It is still unlimited user to user from web interface. but thats useless to me.
Us Cellular is still free to receive…time for other carriers to catch up
For what it’s worth, T-Mobile made a de-facto increase in the price of SMS on their prepaid plan. It used to be free to receive and .10 to send, for an average of .05 per message. They changed it to .10 to send and .05 to receive. To add insult to injury, they offer no text packages for prepaid. Virgin Mobile offers prepaid text messaging packages, but they have other odd quirks.
Hi Dylan. I am a Peekamo user and I love the acrhive and the filter aspect of Peekamo. I do have to disagree with you on the charge to receive SMS. I don’t have a text plan and to date, I have yet to be charged. I just checked with my telco and was advised that receiving an SMS that is SMPP based is not chargable. It would be if it was sent as a SMTP Email to SMS type message. Here is the FAQ page from Peekamo for more info. http://www.peekamo.com/faqs.aspx
Cheers!
TrackGirl
Peekamo.com ID: TrackGirl
Thanks for the tip, anonymous. Peekamo doesn’t give you free SMS (you still have to pay your carrier to receive SMS text messages) but it does put a filter in place that you can use to keep unwanted messages from getting to you — and to keep an archive of messages you’ve received. I’ll write more about Peekamo soon!
All the more reason to start using Peekamo.com, they give you free “real” SMS for US and Canada. Why should you pay for SMS?