I just read a Reuters article about the four major cell phone companies text message rates rising. It seems that Sen. Herb Kohl, chair of the U.S. Senate's antitrust subcommittee, sent a letter to Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc, Sprint Nextel Corp and T-Mobile expressing concern about "what appear to be sharply rising rates your companies have charged to wireless phone customers for text messaging." Kohl wanted an explanation as to why the price of text messages had doubled in three years.

Kohl noted that the cost of sending or receiving a text message had doubled since 2005 to 20 cents on all four carriers.

From the Reuter's article:

"What is particularly alarming about this industrywide rate increase is that it does not appear to be justified by rising costs in delivering text messages," said Kohl.

"Also of concern is that it appears that each of the companies has changed the price for text messaging at nearly the same time, with identical price increases," he wrote. "This conduct is hardly consistent with the vigorous price competition we hope to see in a competitive marketplace."

Yeah, you'd think that the carriers would be competing with each other with their text rates so that more customers would text more often. I hope that Senator Kohl's letter will get some reaction; a reaction in our favor. Thanks Senator Kohl for looking into this!

Dieter has reported on the text messaging rates rise over at our sister site WMExperts.

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