I don't know where you live, but here in the states, an SMS costs 20 cents, for both the sender and the recipient, netting 40 cents for each message... It's a fucking scam that the clueless people put up with because they just don't care...
Interestingly when roaming in Europe, T-mobile charge me 40p/SMS and 20p/MMS. It is actually cheaper* for me to write down what I want to say by hand, take a photo of it, and send that than it for me to tap out an SMS!
Why is this? Well it suggests to me that they want to encourage people off the old SMS infrastructure, possibly due to capacity or manageability issues, and shift them onto the much newer GPRS/3G/whatever network.
* Yes I know you can send text by MMS and I have an E71 so typing isn't a chore anyway.
No - they know most people are going to use SMS and want to gauge them for a s much money as possible.
The SMS infrastructure is fantastic (for them), they use a spare 140bytes in a message the phone is going to send to the tower as part of a 'I'm still here' message anyway - and then charge you 40p for it!
Here (Ireland) it's pretty typical for phone plans to come with all sms free, or at a low price, such as 3c a text. Even on the worst available plans you might pay 9c per sms (and only the sender pays).
