Loading ...Isn’t SMS data also?
First off, I have to admit this blog is a personal pet peeve of mine and it has to do with Canada’s wireless industry as it relates to data. That’s right the buzz word of the 21st century – data – because our lives will continue to become increasingly depend on it.
So Bell, Rogers and Telus finally got smart over the last few months by allowing their customers to use Twitter on their networks the way it was meant to be used. Bell was the first to announce it had reached a deal with Twitter allowing incoming messages at no extra cost in February, Rogers followed last week and Telus joined the party this week.
So what’s my peeve? Well since the days of the pager we have been sending text messages on first generation networks. So why do we need to have a data plan for accessing the internet and sending and receiving emails and a separate plan for text messaging. Isn’t it all the same data?
How quickly we forget, that we started texting in order to save money on our cell phone bills by being cheap with our daytime minutes. Remember, instead of calling someone during the day and paying an arm and a leg for it, we started sending short text messages to suffice. So fast-forward five years and now we pay for a special package in order to send text messages on 3G networks. In addition, Bell, Rogers and Telus now charge 15 cents per text message sent or received and let’s not talk about how the fact that to send two sentences they subdivide one message into three parts in order to earn a cool 30 cents more.
In November, Twitter stopped allowing Canadian users to receive updates from other users via SMS, citing the cost. So it begs the question, with messages 140 characters in length how much capacity are we using on today’s high-speed networks? On September 11, during Hurricane Katrina and during Obama’s inauguration pagers were one of the few wireless networks to remain operational as a result of how little network capacity these devices use. (Yes, I concur that the Blackberry network also remained operational during Obama’s inauguration) So what’s my peeve? It just seems unconscionable to charge 15 cents per message for those without a text plan in 2009 and should you decide to opt for a text messaging package the Big 3 will charge you for that package in addition to your data plan. While this fills the coffers of the Big 3 with additional revenue and helps maintain or increase their ARPU levels it keeps Canada behind when it comes to adoption of today’s technologies. Perhaps this will serve as words of wisdom for the new entrants looking to win customers from the Big 3. So here it is, make is simple, data means data and whatever we – Canadians – consider to be data should be included in one simple monthly data plan.
