Steve Jobs touted the iPhone 2.0's $200 price tag until he was blue in the face. But anyone paying any attention at all quickly noticed that AT&T is making up the difference by upping the price of SMS messages. Under the iPhone's new data plans, you pay $5 per month for 200 messages (which is what was included with the original plan), $15 per month for 1500 messages, or $20 per month for unlimited messages. Given that data is much easier on the network than voice, SMS has to be one of the bigger scams the telcos are currently running -- and not just for the iPhone.
It may not be rocket science, but Jeff Carlson over at Tidbits has a tip to help you avoid exorbitant fees: use AOL's free instant message client for iPhone and iPod Touch. For those not using an iPhone or an iPod Touch, IMing instead of texting is old news. But now iPhone users can get in on the money-saving fun.
In fact, you can use just about any AIM client -- iChat, Adium, Fire or whatever you'd like -- to send a text message to any mobile device capable of sending and receiving text messages.
Source : Wired
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