For years text messaging has been a cash cow for mobile communication providers. Some people pay for an unlimited plan, others have a cap on their texts. If you go over or don’t have a plan, you pay by the text and that can cost anywhere from .5 to .25 cents per text. Either way, it has been a real money maker and let’s be honest, who doesn’t enjoy texting?
The popularity of texting has caused many social networking sites to offer text messaging as part of their services. If you are on Facebook and so are your friends, you can text each other for free and forego the monthly service fee from your mobile provider. That sounds pretty good to me, I pay-out almost $10 per month for texting and that can add up fast.
Well many others have had the same idea. Ovem, who provides independant research, finds that mobile carriers brought-in over $153 billion last year from text messaging alone! The bad side of that statistic is that it is down almost 10% from 2010. This is not sitting well with executives at these firms. They use this revenue to grow their networks and invest in new technology.
What is the answer? Joyn is the answer. Sponsored by Ericson and Rich Communication Suite Technology, the new technology integrates all varieties of social messaging into one application. This way users don’t have to worry about compatibility. It isn’t clear if this Joyn service will cost extra, but it is another way to entice users to purchase a data plan, which as we know, cost more and more all the time.
So even if they can’t get us for texting anymore, data plans and data usage fees are becoming more of an inevitability than ever before. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but as the technology evolves, so will our providers. Get ready to see a change, if you haven’t already.
Joyn is already available for Android and it will coming to iOS soon. Orange, Telefonica, and Vodafone are already experimenting with the service and other providers are bound to follow soon. Look for it in the new year if it sounds like something you can use.