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We’ve all heard the billing horror stories involving too many text messages and we’ve been well trained to expect a charge for type of communication, but AT&T’s recent change in text messaging charges puts the scam being perpetrated on consumers in a harsh spotlight. Let’s just call it making money out of nothin’ at all, to borrow a line from the Air Supply classic.

Now that AT&T is ending its 1,000 texts for ten bucks deal, customers have the choice of paying twenty dollars for unlimited texting or twenty cents per text. The thing is, a text takes about 160 bytes – yes, bytes – of information, so here’s a breakdown of this new plan according to Gizmodo:

AT&T offers a 2 gigabyte per month phone data plan for $25. By breaking this down, we can find out how much they think each text’s worth of data costs. And according to this value, when you’re using the same amount of data to send a text without a messaging plan, they’re charging you 100,000 times more. Yes. Blink a few times and read that again. When AT&T calls data texting, it costs 100,000 times more than when it’s in the form of photos, music, email, or anything else. They’re ripping you off with the force of a nuclear bomb.

Check out the article to see the rest of the scam, but the profit margin will leave you breathless. Next they’ll be charging you for the air consumed during an conversation…and we’ll probably pay it.

Full story at Gizmodo.

Good for business, bad for consumers.

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