…The whole idea that text messages aren’t a free part of the data package is insulting to the consumer. We know there isn’t anything special about text messages… they are encoded in the Internet protocol and routed just like any other series of data packets, and if [in some case] they aren’t, they should be.

To give you an idea of how much data is transfered, a normal english ASCII character takes up 8 bits (8 zero’s and ones), commonly called an octet or a byte. An SMS message is a maximum of 70 characters for a grand total of  70*8 bits = 560 zero’s and ones for the longest possible text message. The text message would be longer if it included foreign or other special characters that require more than one octet. This is excluding overhead, but its fair to exclude overhead as long as we exclude it on what we compare the text message to. So let’s compare it to a YouTube video.

I have a method of downloading Youtube videos which is the subject of another post, but just for comparison one of my videos in FLV (flash video format) which is 4 minutes long is 6MB. 6MB is equal to 6291456 bytes which would be 11234 text messages at the 560 bytes we figured.

Let’s give AT&T some leeway here, lets say every text message is encoded in UTF-8 and takes a full four octets. We’ll pretend that it’s uncompressed and there is a 25% overhead. This is a LOT more than what a text message would ever be, but lets just see how it would compare. This would be 5×560 bytes which equals 2800 bytes per message (maximum, and everyone knows people rarely use the full 70 characters). That same 6MB Youtube video would allow for 2246 text messages. That would be 74 messages a day for 30 days to equal one four minute long Youtube video.

Now how do you feel? Like you’re getting raped? You should.

I pay $5 for 200 text messages, or 1600 bytes and $30 for the unlimited data plan for the iPhone, which is rumored to actually have a 5GB cap even though it’s “unlimited.”