First, it's important to understand how companies like AT&T and Sprint work. In order to get their product to their customers, they buy sections of the wireless spectrum. Radio waves between 300 and 3000 megahertz are used for cell phone service, and so telephone companies purchase the right to use certain frequencies from the government (much in the same way as a radio station). So since they own the right to use the frequencies, they charge their customers whatever they want to use the frequencies for their cell phones.
The trouble is, what exactly are they charging for? And the answer is: data. That's all that sound is. Our words are converted into bits that are shot through the air (in ye olden days, they were shot through copper, then fiber-optic cables), to be picked up by your handset on the other end. Bits and bytes and words and nibbles. The strange thing though, is that we have a way of communicating via sound for no cost: Skype! This technology, of course, is VOIP (voice over IP), and is a tad different from the radio wave frequencies. Instead of transmitting the information via radio waves, it uses the internet (hooray for the internet!). As any frequent Skype user knows, the call quality isn't as pristine as cell carriers, but in my humble opinion, this is a small price to pay for free phone calls. So what does this mean for cell phones? It means that they are probably going to become obsolete if they continue to overprice their plans. One shouldn't have to pay $50 or more to talk for a few hours during the day. Of course, if companies were to lower the price of their 3G wireless access, then I'm sure many people would switch to mobile Skype now(http://www.skype.com/mobile).
Well then, what about text messaging? Surely that's a worthwhile bargain? A few dollars for unlimited text messages? Unfortunately, it isn't a good deal. In fact, while the amount of text messaging has increased, the amount of calling has decreased (people must be starting to wise up). And yet, cell phone companies are making profits. Why? Because the charges for text messages are simply outrageous. Some charge $.20 per message, others $.10. But even at $.01 per message, they're still making a good deal of profit. How much does it cost to transfer less than 160 characters from one phone to another? Almost nothing. Its simply a tiny amount of data. It's just that getting rich from overpriced text messages is too hard to give up.
Except.
There is one service that lets you send free SMS messages. Google Voice (http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html). Now, I'm not exactly a die-hard supporter of Google. Like everyone else, I use their products, from Gmail, to Google Calendar, Blogger, and of course, their search engine. And like everyone else, every time they come out with a great new product my paranoia cranks up another notch. They know quite a lot about me (though that's a topic for another post). But they're offering free text messaging. Why? Because they understand how little it really costs. Sadly though, it's hard to get Google Voice on a cell phone (outside of an Android phone). And cell phone companies are going to fight tooth and nail to keep it that way. For example, Apple recently blocked a Google Voice app on the iPhone. But of course they did. AT&T wasn't about to let themselves lose millions of dollars each year, in the name of "open source". This move was controversial enough to even provoke a response from the FCC, though of course, it's highly unlikely that any lasting consequences will be doled out.
I don't know what the future of telecommunications holds. But if the right people can take control, we will see much cheaper cell phone plans in our future.
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