Do you pay for text messages? If so, you are being scammed.

via Digital Domain – What Carriers Arenâ??t Eager to Tell You About Texting – NYTimes.com.

Perhaps the costs for the wireless portion at either end are high â?? spectrum is finite, after all, and carriers pay dearly for the rights to use it. But text messages are not just tiny; they are also free riders, tucked into whatâ??s called a control channel, space reserved for operation of the wireless network.

Thatâ??s why a message is so limited in length: it must not exceed the length of the message used for internal communication between tower and handset to set up a call. The channel uses space whether or not a text message is inserted.

Professor Keshav said that once a carrier invests in the centralized storage equipment â?? storing a terabyte now costs only $100 and is dropping â?? and the staff to maintain it, its costs are basically covered. â??Operating costs are relatively insensitive to volume,â? he said. â??It doesnâ??t cost the carrier much more to transmit a hundred million messages than a million.â?