belltwit
Now that Bell has the sole contract to provide Twitter/SMS in Canada it’s no small wonder that they’ll be gouging customers even if they have unlimited text plans. At fifteen cents to send OR receive each message, apparently Bell is once again indicating the monopolistic tendencies that they used to force on customers before telephone services were deregulated in Canada.
“Bell is charging users 15 cents for each Twitter message they send or receive, even if they have an unlimited text messaging plan.
“Because Twitter is a third party service, the messages are considered premium and not covered by our plans. This aligns with industry standards regarding third party premium messaging,” said Bell spokeswoman Julie Smithers in an email.
The rationale behind the rip-off is even more ridiculous when you consider that DATA is DATA and 140 characters are 140 characters. Bell gives one more reason why SMS pricing needs to be regulated to a real cost and not a market “premium”
Check out the #belltwit hashtag on Twitter for a running commentary.
links:
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/02/24/tech-twitter-bell.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/blogwatch/2009/02/bell_will_charge_for_tweets_by.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/blogwatch/2009/02/twitter_texts_back_for_bell_cu.html
