AT&T Boosting Pay-Per-Use Messaging Rates Again

You read correctly, AT&T, the biggest GSM carrier in the United States, will be once again raising the cost to send or receive a message. Text message rates will go up $0.05 to $0.20 per message, while MMS rates will also increase by a nickel, up to $0.30. Note that these changes only affect subscribers who are not currently on a monthly messaging plan, and will not increase the overage rates for those already on a plan.

Note also that the big carriers are so desperate to convince customers to use messaging on their handsets that they have resorted to bullying them into signing up for a monthly package. For instance, AT&T currently offers the Messaging Starter package, which includes 200 messages for $5 per month. At these new rates, 200 text messages would cost $40!

Surely there is a better way to convince people to sign up for a package than by bullying them into it, specially since it costs AT&T less than a penny to deliver these messages?

These new rates are set to go into effect on March 30, 2008.