Normally economics tells us when the product or services and demand heavily consumption goes up and dust production goes up lowering costs.

However, the cost for text messaging on all major carriers have doubled within the last two years alone.

"Also,it appears that each of (the) companies has changed the price for text messaging at nearly the same time, with identical price increases,"

U.S. Senator Herb Kohl,

Chairman of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee.

• On average 357 text messages per month, compared with making and receiving 204 phone calls a month.
• Still another source states that more than 1 trillion text messages were sent in 2008 ( Sherry, 2009)

Multiple sources have quoted text messaging to be in the hundreds of billions each month. Verizon wireless customer set a record in June 2008 alone sending over 10 billion text messages. Faithfully the company announced soon thereafter they will be charging five cents more per message sent.

Sprint Nextel, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have all raised their text messaging prices since 2006 an anomaly considering the astronomical growth in usage and, therefore, the decrease in production costs.

1. 
   In 2002, the spokesman for Australia's opposition of communications stated there should be an inquiry into text message prices. The spark? Vodafone made a business decision to increase their short message service (SMS) message prices by $0.25 - matching the exact prices of Telstra and Optus. The spokesman, Lindsay Tanner, was quoted as saying the prices were not justified.
2. In 2004, France's industry minister attacked the French mobile operator SFR for the same rates charged by mobile operators for text messaging service. Industrial minister, Mr. Devedjian, said while operators have needed time to restore their margins after there's a potential investments-that is now been done. Prices must therefore come down.

The problem is the average revenue per user has been falling across all wireless carriers (Spring, AT&T, MetroPCS, Alltel, etc..) in both developed countries and emerging countries, says research firm TeleGeography.

Moreover, current customers have already have met or exceeded their cell phone usage and new customers tend to have stricter budgets. To attract them, companies offer lower-priced prepaid or "family" rate plans -- gaining customers but driving down average ARPU.

Their Defense

Randal Milch, executive vice president and general counsel at Verizon, denied that there was collusion among carriers, citing as evidence the existence of different pricing offered for prepaid plans.

Milch said that “under such plans, Verizon charges between a penny and 20 cents a text message, depending on the plan; AT&T charges 20 cents a message; Sprint charges 10 cents a message or includes all messages at no extra charge; and T-Mobile charges 5 cents an incoming message and 10 cents an outgoing message.”

TNS, a research firm says mobile data products are price elastic, just like voice services. Consumers would download more songs, video and data if prices dropped, TNS says.

• What about price! It costs roughly two one-hundredths of a penny (.02 is the same thing as saying two one hundreths of one percent). Data is Cheap!

As it appears the carriers are running out of options of getting new customers that spend well so in concurrence they are forcing a trend for customers to sign-up for packages at advertised reduced-prices. While this is a better option if you text message a lot if you do not it might just be even if you message a lot just for one month for a special occasion.

Hearings will be coming to a Washington, D.C. near you soon - contact your appriorpriate representative.