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Posted by Monty Solomon on April 14, 2008, 12:59 pm
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'I, like, so totally agree' to stop texting
Parents wrestling with soaring cellphone bills put curbs on children
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff | April 13, 2008
The Boston Globe
It was all spelled out in the clearest terms: "I, Michela
Parmeggiani, do promise to limit my cellphone use . . . NO TEXT
MESSAGING IS ALLOWED ON THIS PHONE! . . . I, like, so totally agree."
Parmeggiani, 12, happily signed her name to the "Cellphone Usage
Contract" drawn up by her father, earning back the phone that she
lost in November when she sent her family's cellphone bill $220
higher than usual, using 1,022 extra calling minutes and more than
200 text messages.
"I was, like, really mad at myself for using so many minutes," said
Parmeggiani of Stoughton, who went without the phone that had been
her lifeline to music and friends. Life for the past few months has
been "really different," she said. "I was used to having [my]
cellphone in my pocket."
Cellphones are the modern-day conduit for whispering in someone's
ear, passing a note, flirting, and plain old talking - especially for
young people. According to the mobile measurement firm M:Metrics,
15.6 million people between 13 and 17 had cellphones as of February,
up 37 percent since November 2004. Text messaging has grown with the
proliferation of phones, with more than 11 million in the age group
texting today.
All that connectivity creates a parenting predicament: Let their
children rack up hundreds of dollars in one-word text messages and
quick calls or take the phones away. Often the solution may be
picking a better plan after parents learn their lesson with one big
bill.
Every generation finds itself facing the chasm between what an older
generation deems appropriate and what the young take for granted. But
cellphones add a twist for today's parents.
...
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/04/13/i_like_so_totally_agree_to_stop_texting/
***** Moderator's Note *****
My son had (past tense) a Virgin Mobile "Pay As You Go" phone that
required him to add money whenever he ran out of minutes. We purchased
it for him so that he could learn to budget his time and to use the
technology effectively.
However, it only took him a couple of weeks to figure out that if he
let it run out of minutes, his mother would add money so that she
could keep in touch with him. So much for responsibility: I put my
foot down, and now survives quite well without one.
Bill Horne
Temporary Moderator
(Please put [Telecom] at the end of the subject line of your post, or
I may never see it. Thanks!)
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Posted by T on April 14, 2008, 4:47 pm
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>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> My son had (past tense) a Virgin Mobile "Pay As You Go" phone that
> required him to add money whenever he ran out of minutes. We purchased
> it for him so that he could learn to budget his time and to use the
> technology effectively.
>
> However, it only took him a couple of weeks to figure out that if he
> let it run out of minutes, his mother would add money so that she
> could keep in touch with him. So much for responsibility: I put my
> foot down, and now survives quite well without one.
>
> Bill Horne
> Temporary Moderator
>
> (Please put [Telecom] at the end of the subject line of your post, or
> I may never see it. Thanks!)
Now that is entirely predictable.
As an adult I've had many cell phones, but most have been for business
use.
I consider cell phones to be electronic leashes. There are times when
it's not that earth shattering if you can't be reached right away.
Actually I liked the SkyTel pager I once had. If a service hiccuped I'd
get a text telling me exactly what broke. I didn't have to spend 20
minutes on the phone explaining how to fix it. In most cases in less
than a half hour I was at a computer where I could shell in and fix the
issue.
I even implemented that at my last job. I had a cell phone with 800
minutes of usage paid for by the job. If I used 100 minutes it was a
miracle. Used a lot of texting though since backup alerts, database
synchronization errors, etc. all got sent to my phone. I pity whoever
has it now.
***** Moderator's Note *****
When my brother-in-law graduated from college in 1973, he went to work
for a "high tech" company that sold products all over the world. He
came home one day with a pager on his belt, long before they were
fashionable.
I said "Hey, you must be an important person!", and he set me right
with an answer I've never forgotten: "Bill, the important people *do*
the beeping!".
Truer words were never spoken.
Bill Horne
Temporary Moderator
(Please put [Telecom] at the end of the subject line of your post, or
I may never see it. Thanks!)
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Posted by mc on April 15, 2008, 1:00 pm
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transmission (or ought to be), why don't they make the texting free, and
charge more for voice?
Incidentally, our university was recently visited by high school students
for the Science Fair. They are immediately obvious, not because they were
slightly younger, but because a substantial number of them never hung up
their cell phones no matter where they went or what they were doing.
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Posted by Koos van den Hout on April 15, 2008, 4:01 pm
If you were Registered and logged in, you could reply and use other advanced thread options > Given that texting is cheaper (for the phone company) than voice
> transmission (or ought to be), why don't they make the texting free, and
> charge more for voice?
For SMS (text over GSM) the real costs are near-zero but the costs are
used to regulate usage (there is probably a perfect economical term for
this) because very high usage does cost capacity for the provider. If
it was really free, someone would write (and spread) IP-over-SMS.
For people who do want to 'text' their friends 200 times a week there are
subscriptions available with the first 1000 sms messages per month "free".
Ofcourse, the phone company knows it sold a subscription with that amount
of messages and can plan capacity.
> Incidentally, our university was recently visited by high school students
> for the Science Fair. They are immediately obvious, not because they were
> slightly younger, but because a substantial number of them never hung up
> their cell phones no matter where they went or what they were doing.
The latest generation of the university students I see in my work all have
mobile phones, talk on them constantly even when cycling around the city
and laptops are becoming quite normal too.
Koos van den Hout
--
Koos van den Hout, PGP keyid DSS/1024 0xF0D7C263 via keyservers
koos@kzdoos.xs4all.nl or RSA/1024 0xCA845CB5
Fax +31-30-2817051 Weather maps from free sources at
http://idefix.net/~koos/ http://weather.idefix.net/
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Posted by T on April 16, 2008, 1:45 pm
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> Given that texting is cheaper (for the phone company) than voice
> transmission (or ought to be), why don't they make the texting free, and
> charge more for voice?
>
> Incidentally, our university was recently visited by high school students
> for the Science Fair. They are immediately obvious, not because they were
> slightly younger, but because a substantial number of them never hung up
> their cell phones no matter where they went or what they were doing.
>
>
True, all texting goes over the common data channel. But what they're
charging you for is texts that go outside that particular carrier. They
just blanket to include internals too.
The money games played by cell carriers are amazing. Unlimited plans
starting at $100 a month? Are they on drugs? I don't understand how VoIP
is now down to about $20 for a YEAR but cell still charges an arm and a
leg.
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