Class Action

Cell Phone Companies Asked to Justify Texting Rates

By classlawblog

As reported by Reuters, the chair of the U.S. Senate?s antitrust panel sent letters to the top four cell phone companies asking them to explain their doubling the price of text messages in three years.  The four companies contacted were Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp., and T-Mobile.  The author of the letter, Sen. Herb Kohl from Wisconsin, was concerned that the industry-wide increase did not appear to be related to the cost of delivering text messages.

Kohl?s letter to the companies noted that text messages were priced at 10 cents a message in 2005 and, as of September 2008, will be 20 cents per message.  Additionally, Kohl expressed concern that each company changed the price for text messaging at nearly the same time, with Sprint being the first company to do so and the rest following suit shortly thereafter.  The cell phone companies were given a deadline of Monday, October 6, 2008 to respond.

Full post as published by ClassLawBlog.com on September 11, 2008 (boomark / email).