Verizon Wireless to levy new fee for sending text messages to VZW customers

By on Oct 10, 2008 at 2:37 AM
News October 10, 2008

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In a move sure to rock the wireless industry, Verizon Wireless announced yesterday that they will start charging content and messaging companies a fee for sending text messages to Verizon Wireless customers. Beginning November 1st, Verizon will charge a 3 cent per message fee for each Mobile Terminated message processed by its network. This fee will be levied on top of the current MT messaging fees (usually a fraction of a cent) already paid by companies. Talk about stifling a booming industry. These new fees will affect a whole range of text messaging services, including search results (Google), sports updates (ESPN), news alerts (CNN), auction alerts (eBay), bank account balance alerts, credit card transaction alerts, and any other company or service that want to use text messaging alerts as a value added service for their customers. Verizon claims the new fee is necessary to cover their overhead in delivering these MT messages. Sounds more like Verizon has found the ultimate cash cow and is looking to “double dip” even further. We can only hope this new practice is met with widespread rebellion and not with widespread adoption by other wireless carriers. Heck, we were even looking at doing SMS updates for BGR. Anyone interested in that?

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  • Matt S

    Well one Positive out of this will be a great decrease in spam and premium sms to customers. Want to spam a crap load of our customers? PAY UP! Want to trap people into premium sms, PAY UP!

  • Damian

    is this how verizon is avoiding the recent senate inquiry into sms charges? so instead of charging the customer more money they are charging someone else? http://www.bgr.com/2008/09/10/senators-smackdown-us-carriers-over-soaring-text-messaging-rates/

  • http://jaxn.org Jackson Miller

    @TRUTH In no way was I saying this is a ploy against Obama. I think they see an opportunity with texting around the election and that opportunity is impacting their timing. The Obama camp will still send the messages.

    I wouldn’t be surprised though if it is the largest coordinated SMS campaign the US has seen.

  • Gus

    Verizon sucks, the service is good but they just suck trying to get money everywhere they can like VZ navigator on your bb where they charge you $10 for a shitty software that enables your GPS, a free technology. VERIZON SUCKS

  • djohns505

    Damn, why do I need to explain myself so throughly? Plain and simple I said get rid of the unlimited texting FOR THE KIDS, you all know that the little brats text instead of talking 100% of the time, so why not instead of letting them get messages for a flat fee, charge per message instead; what a way to pay for the overhead… Nowhere did I say anything about getting rid of unlimited texting option completely or that it was ONLY kids that send text messages, you JustME need to read better, man.

  • DavidB

    Yay! Finally! Charge the sender, not the recipient. About time.
    And no BG, I don’t want SMS alerts for BG posts (or comments). RSS and email are just fine thank you very much and there is NOTHING posted on ANY blog that is so time critical that anyone needs to know right away.

  • crashoverride

    Ok-VZ has this huge base of customers and a good network-not argument here. All these new little charges, like texting people on other carriers (not everyone else you know has VZ-Duh) are starting to take their toll. Their network is NOT that much better than some others where I live. I get the idea of trying to save bandwidth and lower their costs rather than admit they need a ton of customers to come in new every since they employ like ten times the people you think (their call centers are all around where I live). I am starting to lose money on my bill that adds up and it is not cool, so I am probably going to leave. It is really lame to add on these crazy charges that customers have not way to avoid unless they block texting, which is liking going amish in wireless. Way to go VZ by sticking the customer yet again. I am about done with that, no matter how good you think the rest is-that is too far.

  • new fish

    they should make it verizon to verizon texting free

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