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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