Adam, I know your pain. I’m currently in frequent contact with somebody from the US and the costs for text messages from my German T-Mobile to her US T-Mobile are just way too high. Unfortunately I haven’t found a good way around it either, but once I have I’ll let you know. If you figure a way out, tell me.

- Posted on Tuesday, October 24, 2006 at 6:46 [ Permalink to this comment ]

Adam, I run Txt2Day - a free text message site…  what countries / cell phone providers are you trying to send messages to?

hit me up with an email of where you’re having difficulty sending and I’ll add support to my website for it.  Then, you’ll just be on your own with the replies… but the sending will be free.

- Posted on Saturday, November 4, 2006 at 0:44 [ Permalink to this comment ]

Rant on, dude!  I suspect it’s market driven but I’m also confused about text pricing which seems to run contrary to their costs.

- Posted on Friday, November 10, 2006 at 5:06 [ Permalink to this comment ]

hey there, check www.bliblo.com
I use the South African site, can’t view International - so I can’t compare rates for you.  But hey, by South African standards they rock for data rates!

- Posted on Saturday, November 18, 2006 at 20:36 [ Permalink to this comment ]

I am from Germany but live in the US, also using t-mobile.  I use www.3Utelecom.com for my calls to Europe, they charge 4.8 cents/minute and bill by the second, no signup fees, no monthly base-fee, they bill you only for what you talk.  Very convenient if you register your cell phone with them - you don’t have to enter any codes like with a calling card.  Been using them for four years now, nice guys.  I don’t text message, so can’t say anything about that, but I hear your pain.  - Maybe this helps.  Have a good one!

- Posted on Saturday, December 16, 2006 at 22:27 [ Permalink to this comment ]

Thomas, glad I’m not the only one

Ryan… neat service, and I got a test SMS I sent to myself (in the U.S.) in about 2 seconds!  But I really would prefer to have my friends be able to reply directly to me, and—understandably—they can’t do that with your generously free service.

Joe, maybe it’s ‘cause they assume that people sending international text messages are doing so for business (a much smaller percentage of folks, probably, internationally text friends socially).  And, as we all know, it’s all about socking it to the business folks.

Wentasurfin… fascinating service, but not quite text messages

Julia… yep, that’s seemingly reasonable (though, perhaps surprisingly, AT&T CallVantage charges me even less!), but cheap LD is a dime a dozen, so to speak.  I think that’s ‘cause there’s competition there, whereas we’re locked into a single provider for bidirectional text messaging.  No competition = screw the customer, I guess.

- Posted on Saturday, December 16, 2006 at 22:42 [ Permalink to this comment ]

Just saw this post, a bit late, but was glad to know someone else is annoyed by the high rates. When I try to call my brother in China with t-mobile the rate is $1.64/minute. Its incredibly expensive.
Cingular does offer a international plan that lets users call internationally for 0.15 a minutes as well as a monthly fee of $5-15. A lot cheaper than t-mobile, I wish they could do something similar.

- Posted on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 16:11 [ Permalink to this comment ]

I use Internet telephony, it saves me a lot of money.

- Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 at 9:31 [ Permalink to this comment ]

I feel your pain. I had a foreign exchange student stay with me and now I can’t keep in contact with him without it costing a ton! I’ve found a lot of places online that you can send messages to the receivers phone, but you might as well just im them from AIM or MSN. AT&T came out with international SMS but once again it is expensive. 100 text messages for $10. Not much of a bargain but i guess we’re still living in the stone age. If you find anything. Post it. I’m sure there are a lot more people out there struggling with the same problem we do.

- Posted on Saturday, August 4, 2007 at 18:14 [ Permalink to this comment ]

I don’t know how this service works from the US, but I have used Blitzplanet
to send cheap picture messages and text messages from Germany and Spain to the UK.

I know that it works from the UK to the US, the charges for international SMS are 10p,
which is a lot cheaper than the average of 35p we are charged here.
With Blitzplanet I can also send picture messages at just 10p.

The service is free download, and sits on your computer like any application would ‘Snakes’
for example; it works quite like Skype, but it requires only the sender to have the service installed
to send SMS or picture messages internationally.

This service works only if the user has Internet, NOT WAP, installed. So the user needs to add
an Internet data package to their phone. They need GPRS.

Every time a message is sent off a maximum of 160 bytes is deducted from that data package,
this leaves users with hundreds of messages to send on just one MB.

There are free trial options on the site, the benefits over the other services here,
is that Blitzplanet doesn’t use re-routing, so you can used your contact address
book on your phone.

There’s lots more to the service, just go to the website.

- Posted on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 12:01 [ Permalink to this comment ]

forgot to mention the URL http://www.blitzplanet.com

- Posted on Tuesday, August 28, 2007 at 12:06 [ Permalink to this comment ]

It’s just because, while calling at distance level,
service operator need to use services of another services provider, signals are going to transfer from their towers and than it will reach to us.

- Posted on Monday, February 25, 2008 at 10:44 [ Permalink to this comment ]

I bought a T-Mobile SIM Card it’s PAYG but everyone time I send a international text it sends but when I want to receive international texts it doesnt send to me

any reasons why?
Do i need to activate it?
I get messages from the UK but not from international

- Posted on Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 15:22 [ Permalink to this comment ]

Now i have got few websites which allow us to join for free and allow to send text messages all over the world and getting from my friend too.

- Posted on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 14:50 [ Permalink to this comment ]

My daughter is travelling in Europe, with a Netherlands prepaid Tmobile phone.  Does anyone know how I could purchase prepaid minutes for her, from here in the US?  Tmobiles giftcard site doesn’t seem to work for internatational nbrs.

- Posted on Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 13:24 [ Permalink to this comment ]

even i prefereed to send email and sms due to higher rate.

- Posted on Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 7:42 [ Permalink to this comment ]

I just took a job in Iceland to play basketball. I am looking for the best way to be able to talk to my girlfriend in the United States. Anyone with any information on the best cell phone rates, companies, anything please tell me. I dont want to spend alot of money but I am willing to pay alil so I can talk to my girl. I looked into t mobile and att but its so expensive. I heard to buy a unlocked phone and just get a sim card over there but I dont know much about that..Anyone with anything..I would apprecaite it.
Thanks guys

- Posted on Tuesday, September 2, 2008 at 2:49 [ Permalink to this comment ]

http://Send2World.com offers cheap messages between Taiwan, USA, and Canada.  You can even try it for Free, no credit card needed.

- Posted on Friday, December 12, 2008 at 15:02 [ Permalink to this comment ]

Well, now Google Voice offers free texting, but alas, unless you had a Grand Central account, the service isn’t available yet publicly :-(. 

As a Googler, I’ve been using it for a while and really like it, so… the moment it’s out, jump on it!

In the meantime, check out this help page and sign up on the waiting list via the leave-us-your-address link!

- Posted on Sunday, May 24, 2009 at 14:46 [ Permalink to this comment ]