Things that wind me up about text messaging

Perhaps it’s the Scotsman in me, but I still get really annoyed when people text one digit to me. 

For example, I text: "See you in 10 minutes" and the recipient feels somehow compelled to reply with:

"y"

Twelve and a half pence including VAT on a standard Vodafone service plan (after you’ve used up your paltry text message allowance).  12.5p?  It’s not the wasting of the cash; it’s the fact that if the recipient was using a Blackberry, it’d be ‘free’.  You can send as many characters as you want in a Blackberry PIN message and not be billed (ok, so there’s a 1,000 chr limit per message).  But they’re essentially free. 

However you have to pay 12.5 pence BECAUSE you decided to get yourself a stupid phone.  In this day and age.  IN THIS day and age, Nokia are still chucking out handsets that can still ONLY do 160 characters and FORCE their owners to have to pay outrageous rates per message.

And the rates are outrageous. One penny is outrageous. Yes I know there are "internetworking fees", because they’re ‘set’ and ‘required’ because ‘someone has to maintain the quality of service’.  But if two people on a £10/month Blackberry service can send virtually unlimited PIN messages between each other, WHY should it still be the case with the lastest Nokia? Or Sony Ericsson?

Obviously there’s a material reason for the networks to continue this nonsense when you look at the billions and billions of 160 character messages being sent everywhere.  Still, there’s not much to be done 😉 other than hand out Blackberries to everybody.  Or force everyone to upgrade their handset tomorrow!

That, or give me unlimited text messaging and phone calls for £100 a month.  I think that’s coming in the next few years.  It’s got to.

I’m still a huge fan of the medium.