Why I don’t text much

By kate on June 10th, 2009

It comes down to cost. Either I must pay my cell phone carrier a monthly fee for some number of included texts (which is more than I’d ever send), or pay $0.15 each. I might be willing to do that, except I get unlimited data on my phone, a Blackberry. I came across this recent piece from NPR about texting, and I have to say I agree with most of it:

If we all expect each other to receive text messages, and we all expect that people prefer to be texted rather than called, then we are all more likely to send text messages. And if we are likely to send text messages, the carriers can charge us monthly rates for doing so. AT&T, for example, has packages ranging from $5 a month for 200 text messages to $20 a month for unlimited. And by “text message,” they mean any message sent or received.� This really irritates me!� (whole article)

I don’t have quite the militant stance that this journalist does… I’ll send or receive the odd text with good friends who are inveterate texters. But every text costs me money.

Can I suggest that, if you’d like to text me, just send me an email if you can? I get them both on my phone with equal urgency.

An even better text-to-data bridge is Twitter. Direct tweets can be sent by your own preferred method, and received by the recipient’s preferred method. It’s the most elegant answer to this problem I’ve found.