Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Normally, this is my place to poke fun at the idiocy that comes out of our tech industry, but today I’m going to poke holes at telecoms that find it appropriate to charge us $20,000 in our monthly phone bill without so much as a courtesy call.  SMS has become a cash call and unsuspecting folks are finding the surprise bill too much to handle.  Assembled here is how you can stick it to the SMS man.

And really, you big fat-cat telecoms, you’ve brought this on.  The price you’ve charged for delivering this stuff has increased over time, not decreased like most things in tech.  Now, as you cling to squeezing another $20 out of me per month, I am going to strike back .  Here is how you can reap the free stuff.  Kinda, sorta.

SMS without the phone:

• via email
• via GMail chat
• via the web
• SMS with the phone:
• Get a plan
• Got Data?
• Stuff you don’t have, yet.

Off Phone SMS

These are some of the ways you can shift your texting need off your phone onto free methods.  The experience is different but the results might just work for you.

SMS via email

Did you know you can send SMS messages through email?  It’s true.  All you have to do is know the email address the carriers set up and you are good to go.  This seems to work for many, but not all, carriers.

How To: Simply send an email to the carriers gateway and it will show up on your recipients phone as an SMS.  Check out this page for the @carrier.net address as they’ve assembled a pretty good list for many different countries.  Simply choose the carrier then enter their number and hit “go.”  The email address will be displayed directly below the button.  Nice and easy.

SMS via chat

Or GMail has this feature integrated into its chat function.  According to Google, “send SMS text messages right from Gmail. You chat from your comfy computer and reach your friends on the go; they get your messages as texts and can peck out replies on their little keyboards.”

Even better: if your friends use GMail, when you log on you’ll see if they are active and if so you you can just IM them through GMail Chat.  If they go offline (and GMail will tell you that) you can switch to SMS and continue the conversation.  The conversation also becomes searchable, something SMS is sorely lacking.

How To: First go into Labs setting and enable “Text Messaging (SMS) in Chat”.  The SMS will come from a (406) number and replies will pop up in your chat box, just like a chat.  I’ve used this service and it works well after the initial confusion over the (406).

Spies like us

Want to be even more anonymous?  Need to keep it uber simple for yourself or maybe a grandparent that can’t handle playing the CD you sent?  Just direct them to one of the many websites that will send your SMS for free.

How To: visit a site like gizmo.com, enter the country and phone number and message.  The site takes care of the nitpicky stuff like gateway address.  It doesn’t get much easier.

With a phone

Get a plan.  It is key to avoiding the $0.15 per SMS fee they’ll charge you if you go over your limit, so choose a plan wisely.  Most companies offer an unlimited plan for up to $20 per month (or $30 on a family plan) to allow you to send 700 texts per day.  Do you really have the time though?

Got Data?

If you’ve got a data plan, you can trade your SMS for IM’ing.  Apps like Facebook, Google’s Talk,AOL,  Meebo and others support IM.  You can set a time to all get online and send messages this way, without running up a bill.

How To: simply agree on a platform, agree to a time and type away.

Stuff you can’t use, yet

Then there is stuff you probably don’t have yet.  With the help of Google Voice, you can send SMS from the Google Voice website, or better yet, from an App like GV Mobile, you send a text right from your iPhone.  The only catch here is you probably have GV forwarding texts to you so you’ll get hit with the incoming.  But hey, you’ve just cut your texting habit in half.

How To: Wait it out.

Summary

Texting doesn’t seem to be going away.  These days, I get texts from schools about closings and early dismissals, I get texts on info on when practices are, and then there are the random texts I get like “get milk.”  For many of us, throwing money at it isn’t that good a solution.  These are just some of the solutions.

Got more suggest?  Let us know in the comments!