Will SMS pricing finally go down?

MG Siegler at VentureBeat wrote an interesting post last week about text messaging pricing. He speculated that the introduction of the Push notification functionality in the new iPhone 3.0 software this summer could finally put pressure on At&t and/or all carriers to lower fees for SMS.   I wrote about text messaging prices a while back.

Seems like not much has changed though. MG makes a good point that the Push Notification service will make Mobile IM (Meebo app was demonstrated at the Apple event & pictured here) a much more feasible alternative for iPhone users, a fast-growing segment of mobile users.  I agree that folks will try to use mobile IM to circumvent paying for SMS, particualrly with other friends who use the iPhone.  I know lots Blackberry-owners who do the same with Blackberry Messenger. The challenge of course will be messaging all those folks who don’t use Mobile IM, it’s the ubiquity of SMS, amongst other things that makes it so useful. So people will still have to use SMS for some of their contacts at least.  Will be interesting to see if enough traffic gets siphoned off for the carriers to take notice and reduce the price points.

On a slightly unrelated note, a funny cartoon about text messaging from the WSJ is below.