Is there any reason, beyond corporate greed, for SMS messages to cost so much?

If I get it right, an SMS message is just a short string of data, no different from a message we send in a messenger. If so, then what makes them so expensive? If we’d take Internet plans and consider how much data an SMS takes, we should pay tiny fraction of a cent for each message; why doesn’t that happen?

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    6 months ago

    If you need to send SMS commercially they’re still generally priced at $0.03 each. I just had to deal with that because some users will apparently only turn on MFA if they can get the codes by txt.

    • rdyoung@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      6 months ago

      OP didn’t clarify personal versus business. I’m aware of how much businesses get ripped off, I’ve looked into using the short codes for promoting my own business and shit is not cheap.

      • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        In the wild west days of the internet we used to connect consumer CDMA phones straight to our servers. You’d walk around your COLO and peek in racks of crazy expensive, rack mounted hardware with the world’s cheapest flip phone sitting on top.

        The telcos caught wind and started terminating accounts. It was a great way to have a server tell you it fell off the network.