Verizon Wireless Plans to Charge Companies Sending Text Messages
Verizon Wireless this week told companies that send out text messages that starting Nov. 1 it will impose a fee of 3 cents for each message it delivers to the phones of its subscribers.
That fee is in addition to the fee of as much as 20 cents that those subscribers pay Verizon to receive the same message.
Text messages have become a popular way for companies to send bits of information to customers — sports scores, flight delays, bank balances or the latest updates from a social network.
The charge by Verizon Wireless, the nation’s second-largest cellphone service provider after AT&T, may prompt companies that have been working to tap into the texting boom to rethink their strategies. Many may simply stop sending messages to Verizon customers.
Steve Livingston, the director of marketing for mBlox, which processes text messages for companies including News Corporation’s MySpace social network and The New York Times, said the volume of messages it handles could fall by more than half…more