> I have never really understood the rationale behind the US model of charging for received texts.
Vendor charges customer because they can and customer is powerless. What about that don't you understand?
More seriously - I think it traces back to the fact that in the US you pay airtime for both incoming and outgoing calls, including "free" (1-800) numbers; The reason for this was that originally:
a) mobile calls were really expensive
b) there were no number range or pattern allocated for mobile phone numbers (thus, when you call a number, you generally don't know if it is landline, mobile, virtual or which operator it is (or ever was)).
So caller-to-mobile pays the same (they don't know they are calling mobile), and recipient-on-mobile pays the rest. And since everyone was used to that, the operators extended that to text as well.
Vendor charges customer because they can and customer is powerless. What about that don't you understand?
More seriously - I think it traces back to the fact that in the US you pay airtime for both incoming and outgoing calls, including "free" (1-800) numbers; The reason for this was that originally:
a) mobile calls were really expensive b) there were no number range or pattern allocated for mobile phone numbers (thus, when you call a number, you generally don't know if it is landline, mobile, virtual or which operator it is (or ever was)).
So caller-to-mobile pays the same (they don't know they are calling mobile), and recipient-on-mobile pays the rest. And since everyone was used to that, the operators extended that to text as well.