It appears T-Mobile USA Inc. has held out long enough. The No. 4 carrier has fallen in line with its three larger rivals and announced that it too will increase text-messaging rates from 10 cents to 15 cents per message, beginning June 1.
As revenues continue to run flat from the voice services that sustain all the tier-one carriers, each is scrambling to generate more profits from data services. The increases-which started at Sprint Nextel Corp. and spread to Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc.’s Cingular service-appear to be an attempt to convince more subscribers to add text-messaging plans.
In a twist to this trend, though, T-Mobile USA is decreasing its pay-per-use rate for MMS messages from 25 cents to 15 cents per message.
The widespread rate changes in the industry have led many consumer rights advocates to claim subscribers should be able to walk away from their contracts without paying an early-termination fee since it could be considered a material change to the terms and conditions of their contracts.
T-Mobile USA was not immediately available to comment on whether the fee changes would affect ETFs.
T-Mobile USA joins crowd, raises texting fee to 15 cents
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