Posted by
Duane Bolick on Friday, September 12, 2008 1:40:39 AM
"justify the "sharply rising rates" they charge people to send and receive text messages."
His concern is that the average cost of sending text messages has doubled over the past three years or so, and is now:
"20 cents per message, up from 10 cents in 2005."
and he wants the sellers of this valuable service to justify their increased prices.
Thanks to Democratic Senator Kohl for bringing this to national attention, but I'm more interested in why the consumers of cellular text messaging haven't complained yet. Apparently, the people who use and pay for this service are OK with the current (Democratic-Senator-disapproved) price increase of sending and receiving a text message on their cell phones.
It's actually pretty easy to choose to not participate in the potentially economically-ruinous practice of receiving and sending text messages. Your first line of defense is to not have a cell phone (ah, completely unrealistic, some might say, but I think it just might be possible to survive without one.).
Should you choose to have a cellular telephone, but you don't want to be exploited by the exorbitant prices that cell phone carriers charge for text messaging, you must go through the taxing process of saying, "No thanks, I don't want to send, or receive, text messages," when you purchase your service.
If you happen to have children (who, invariably and inconveniently like to *constantly* TXT their BFF), you can actually ask the cell phone company who provides you with cell phones and cell service to limit the number of outgoing and incoming text messages that you'll have to pay for. If not, I suggest you choose a cell carrier who'll let you.
...
Regardless, I'm glad that there are Democrats like Herb Kohl out there who are watching over us to figure out when the price of stuff is "too high," and we're all just "too stupid" to figure it out on our own.
I guess that's what we pay Congress for.