One of these days, the network providers are going to stop putting arbitrary labels on their data, as though "voice", "text" and "data" are not all travelling through the same towers and pipes.
These three activities have different QoS constraints: "voice" data is real time, lossy, and therefore has hardware assisted compression and routing; text messages and data are non-lossy, but have drastically different timing and retry constraints. So, even if they "traveled through the same towers and pipes" (they don't, a detail more expanded on by mdasen in his comment), it wouldn't make sense to charge the same for them as they have different cost requirements (although it might be somewhat more equal than it is now; in particular, text messages, which occupy valuable and limited control channel space, would likely become cheaper).
Text messages are an interesting one. Essentially, they cost nothing to the carrier in that they get transmitted as part of the control channel. However, there is a cost to supporting a phone idling on a network. The control channel has to be in communication with it using up bandwidth. So, the SMS gets put in with the control channel instructions and so its marginal cost is 0, but there's still a cost. Beyond that, your carrier has to pay a termination fee to the receiving carrier when you send a text message to them and that is a cost. So, when you send a text message off-network, there is a cost to your carrier.
Voice similarly travels a different path. In CDMA systems, the voice channel and data channel are physically separate. Even with UMTS where the voice and data traffic travels over the same channel, there have been significant advancements for data transmission (HSPA, HSPA+) that allow for greater efficiency.
Even with VoIP, a real distinction can be made. Like texting, the carrier of the receiving party charges a termination fee to the carrier of the calling party. So, if you're on Verizon and call a user on Sprint, Sprint charges Verizon to connect the call (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_rates). That means that while VoIP would use network resources in the same way as data, the carrier would face a higher cost because of the termination rate. This is also why many free VoIP services won't let you call those free conference call services (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/att-says-google-voi...). They're usually set up with a carrier who charges an absurd termination rate that pays for the service.
While they are travelling through the same towers, they're taking different paths and those different paths do have different costs. Part of it is regulatory: termination fees are meaningful costs to carriers even if one considers them artificial. Part of it is the current time: in 3-5 years, we'll probably be on VoIP. Part of it is that data transmission (wired or wireless) has low marginal costs, but decent fixed costs: it doesn't cost the carrier much to support you as a marginal user, but they have put tens of billions into their network even if your phone just idles on it. Right now, wireless is priced in a "consumer" way. We don't pay for what we use, but rather some awkward approximation based on what they think consumers will accept charges for. This is in contrast to, say, utilities which usually have a fixed charge for being on the network (to cover fixed costs) and then a usage rate (which covers marginal costs).
I don't really have a conclusion. Carriers are trying to make more money off you in a way that's objectionable, but they aren't the same. I won't defend the pricing, but I want to point out the difference.
The labour theory of value is not correct. People view talking, texting and internet as different, and hence businesses will charge different for them.
Cell network providers have only recently been dealing with this problem. Landline and Cable providers have been reselling the same pipe through "voice", "data" and "tv" channels for a lot longer, and they continue to get away with it.
Carriers will not voluntarily give up this incremental revenue. I live in Boston, when my choice of cable carrier are Comcast and errr... ummm.. Comcast.
Until there are more competing vendors, I think this transition away from arbitrary labels to one single dumb pipe will be much slower that we all hope.
Well if you look at it, unless you use "text" for "surfing" like in this app, it actually does not cost much to the providers. You can not type all day, can you?
So by "unlimited" text all they are saying is that you will tire yourself texting say about X SMS and thats it per day.
1000 SMS * 160 chars * 2 bytes each (arbitrary) = 320000 bytes. Thats just 320KB. Thats cheap isn't it? Can you type more than that per day?
I've been trying to access the voice settings to modem-dial for a while, but I didn't think to (ab)use SMS this way.
Why T-Mobile only, though? In theory, you should be able to use this to talk to any SMS gateway, but you're going to end up paying on the gateway side ;(
Of the four major US providers, T-Mobile and Verizon are the only ones with MMS gateways (I use MMS to send the responses) that don't require a sign in by a customer (I only have T-Mobile myself). I tested Verizon's MMS gateway with my friend who has Verizon cell service, but it didn't seem to work for some reason.
Do you use compression at all or is it straight uncompressed HTTP via SMS? Or something else entirely? This is wonderful for it's creative (mis)use of texting...
The requests (which are just URLs, and any postdata/cookies if applicable) are sent to my server via SMS.
The responses are sent back to the phone via MMS, in up to 5 (I think?) segments. I download the webpage along with all resources (stylesheets, images, etc.) and put everything in a zip file. I encode the zip file as a PNG (each RGB pixel is 3 bytes of the zip file) and send the PNG in the MMS.
Now, if only people at US T-Mobile saw your app the way I see it - an alternative way of accessing and browsing the web in cases of emergency - not only would you not get shut down, but you'd be given extra resources to develop this further, public praise on creative use of their services and so on.
Of course, if I was Verizon - whose service you say did not work - I wouldn't wait for T-Mobile to get their hands on you first. I'd contact you immediately and I would make sure Verizon's network worked like a charm.
There's ton of completely free PR to be gained here.
However, unfortunately I don't think emergency use when data services aren't up is a legit use case, since webpages are sent from my server to your phone via MMS and I think MMSes are downloaded via a data connection.
I hope it doesn't get shut down TOO fast. I think it has a chance since the userbase will probably be very small, since the number of people who have Android phones without a data plan with US T-Mobile is probably on the order of thousands...
PPK came up with JSON over SMS, which would be a great way for people to use apps with phones (or in countries) that don't support data (including MMS). I guess this is a much bigger problem in developing countries. You can see his slides about this here: http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/10/fronttrends_...
You should make an entertaining mini-game to play every time the page is loading. Since you can consistently count on long load times, make the best of it :)
I saw this when I was googling around to see if anyone had already done this, but I was kind of confused by what exactly it is. I don't think it's the same thing.
T-Mobile's terms (and I would presume other carriers) already say they can cut your unlimited text off if you're using it as some sort of automated gateway. This is meant to keep you from using your cheap text plan as a commercial SMS service (ex: Twitter), they could cut this off as well.
I know a way to use another mobile carrier's data network without paying for any service at all. I thought about making a mobile app to exploit it, but I know they'd probably just close the hole in a couple weeks. It would make a good first attempt at an Android app, though...
I remember getting an Ericsson (A2618?) phone in around 2000 that was advertised as a WAP phone and being very disappointed that it only supported WAP over SMS (UK networks didn't allow that - I think the closest network with support was in Greece).
This is a cool idea, but it sounds like something that will be shut down pretty quickly. If not directly, then by carriers who decide that your unlimited texting plan actually does have a limit, kind of like your "unlimited" data plan.
I am wondering how expensive this would be for a pre-paid plan as a last resort to google information or fetch some mobile sites. I know it is 10c to send SMS and 25c to receive MMS, so can we assume that it would cost a minimum of 35c per each request? If the browser requests more resources when the JS is executed, would it automatically result in more requests to be sent? Can this be somehow controlled? I have unlimited data, so don't need this, but the wife uses a prepaid plan and T-Mobile has no viable data options, so would like to give this option in case of "emergency".
Cool hack! Along the same (disturbed) lines, I wonder if it would be possible to do tcp/ip over SMS using a tun or tap type driver? i.e. take the packet, encode, break into parts, SMS to a remote gateway, undo the packing, reassemble and send it on it's way. Sort of like RFC 1149, "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers" but using SMS. Probably slower than pigeons though :-)
Funny thing is, I just transferred 1TB of data from work to home (offsite backup) in just 5 minutes today... via bicycle even! Didn't even think of that until just now. Guess the saying still holds true then!
Although to be fair, doing the backups took considerably more time - a usb external hard disk doesn't copy 1TB that quickly...
That's pretty great- wish I had an android to try it!
I can't help but wonder what kind of speed you actually get through that- would it be sufficient for day-to-day use, or just enough for a few patient page loads now and then?
Not sufficient for day-to-day use, probably between 15 seconds and a minute to get a page. But if you don't have a data plan, it's possibly better than nothing...
[+] [-] SwellJoe|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saurik|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdasen|14 years ago|reply
Text messages are an interesting one. Essentially, they cost nothing to the carrier in that they get transmitted as part of the control channel. However, there is a cost to supporting a phone idling on a network. The control channel has to be in communication with it using up bandwidth. So, the SMS gets put in with the control channel instructions and so its marginal cost is 0, but there's still a cost. Beyond that, your carrier has to pay a termination fee to the receiving carrier when you send a text message to them and that is a cost. So, when you send a text message off-network, there is a cost to your carrier.
Voice similarly travels a different path. In CDMA systems, the voice channel and data channel are physically separate. Even with UMTS where the voice and data traffic travels over the same channel, there have been significant advancements for data transmission (HSPA, HSPA+) that allow for greater efficiency.
Even with VoIP, a real distinction can be made. Like texting, the carrier of the receiving party charges a termination fee to the carrier of the calling party. So, if you're on Verizon and call a user on Sprint, Sprint charges Verizon to connect the call (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_rates). That means that while VoIP would use network resources in the same way as data, the carrier would face a higher cost because of the termination rate. This is also why many free VoIP services won't let you call those free conference call services (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/att-says-google-voi...). They're usually set up with a carrier who charges an absurd termination rate that pays for the service.
While they are travelling through the same towers, they're taking different paths and those different paths do have different costs. Part of it is regulatory: termination fees are meaningful costs to carriers even if one considers them artificial. Part of it is the current time: in 3-5 years, we'll probably be on VoIP. Part of it is that data transmission (wired or wireless) has low marginal costs, but decent fixed costs: it doesn't cost the carrier much to support you as a marginal user, but they have put tens of billions into their network even if your phone just idles on it. Right now, wireless is priced in a "consumer" way. We don't pay for what we use, but rather some awkward approximation based on what they think consumers will accept charges for. This is in contrast to, say, utilities which usually have a fixed charge for being on the network (to cover fixed costs) and then a usage rate (which covers marginal costs).
I don't really have a conclusion. Carriers are trying to make more money off you in a way that's objectionable, but they aren't the same. I won't defend the pricing, but I want to point out the difference.
[+] [-] apike|14 years ago|reply
The reason we want this to happen is the same reason the carriers don't want it to happen: it's a lot harder to make margins on being a dumb pipe.
[+] [-] rmc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewparker|14 years ago|reply
Carriers will not voluntarily give up this incremental revenue. I live in Boston, when my choice of cable carrier are Comcast and errr... ummm.. Comcast.
Until there are more competing vendors, I think this transition away from arbitrary labels to one single dumb pipe will be much slower that we all hope.
[+] [-] brainless|14 years ago|reply
1000 SMS * 160 chars * 2 bytes each (arbitrary) = 320000 bytes. Thats just 320KB. Thats cheap isn't it? Can you type more than that per day?
[+] [-] Iv|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e1ven|14 years ago|reply
I've been trying to access the voice settings to modem-dial for a while, but I didn't think to (ab)use SMS this way.
Why T-Mobile only, though? In theory, you should be able to use this to talk to any SMS gateway, but you're going to end up paying on the gateway side ;(
[+] [-] FaceKicker|14 years ago|reply
Of the four major US providers, T-Mobile and Verizon are the only ones with MMS gateways (I use MMS to send the responses) that don't require a sign in by a customer (I only have T-Mobile myself). I tested Verizon's MMS gateway with my friend who has Verizon cell service, but it didn't seem to work for some reason.
[+] [-] calebmpeterson|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FaceKicker|14 years ago|reply
The responses are sent back to the phone via MMS, in up to 5 (I think?) segments. I download the webpage along with all resources (stylesheets, images, etc.) and put everything in a zip file. I encode the zip file as a PNG (each RGB pixel is 3 bytes of the zip file) and send the PNG in the MMS.
[+] [-] luckyisgood|14 years ago|reply
Now, if only people at US T-Mobile saw your app the way I see it - an alternative way of accessing and browsing the web in cases of emergency - not only would you not get shut down, but you'd be given extra resources to develop this further, public praise on creative use of their services and so on.
Of course, if I was Verizon - whose service you say did not work - I wouldn't wait for T-Mobile to get their hands on you first. I'd contact you immediately and I would make sure Verizon's network worked like a charm.
There's ton of completely free PR to be gained here.
[+] [-] FaceKicker|14 years ago|reply
However, unfortunately I don't think emergency use when data services aren't up is a legit use case, since webpages are sent from my server to your phone via MMS and I think MMSes are downloaded via a data connection.
[+] [-] martinshen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FaceKicker|14 years ago|reply
I hope it doesn't get shut down TOO fast. I think it has a chance since the userbase will probably be very small, since the number of people who have Android phones without a data plan with US T-Mobile is probably on the order of thousands...
[+] [-] dave1010uk|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cloudwalking|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Garbage|14 years ago|reply
http://www.siteonmobile.com/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hp_launches_siteonmobil...
[+] [-] FaceKicker|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] outside1234|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ConstantineXVI|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterwwillis|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dll|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eogas|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haridsv|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbuzbee|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rokhayakebe|14 years ago|reply
Check this. If this is based on SMS/MMS, then I should be able to text you an address and have you return the pages as MMS.
[+] [-] rwolf|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hollerith|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] e1ven|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dools|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vladoh|14 years ago|reply
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck loaded with hard disks :)
[+] [-] jurjenh|14 years ago|reply
Although to be fair, doing the backups took considerably more time - a usb external hard disk doesn't copy 1TB that quickly...
[+] [-] ltamake|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FaceKicker|14 years ago|reply
Sorry :(
[+] [-] wingerlang|14 years ago|reply
edit: http://www.labnol.org/internet/receive-web-pages-by-email/18...
[+] [-] fishtoaster|14 years ago|reply
I can't help but wonder what kind of speed you actually get through that- would it be sufficient for day-to-day use, or just enough for a few patient page loads now and then?
[+] [-] FaceKicker|14 years ago|reply