Short text messaging should be dead by now

Last week I noticed a new billboard at the stairways of the collegebuilding. It frustrated me every time I walked past it. Today I decided to rant about it, yeah!

A crappy shot taken with a Samsung i600

The billboard is about the Dutch telecommunication provider Hi. The text underneath the typing-guy says: “Waarom praten als je kan smsen”, which means: “Why talk if you could send a short text message“.

Come on, short text messaging should be dead by now, people should be using email services on their mobile devices instead. Nowadays almost every mobile device supports some kind of connectivity to the internet, like: 3G, Wifi or even less than 3G. I’m currently paying € 7.50 for unlimited (fair use) datatraffic through my Samsung i600. This enables me to send an unlimited amount of emails. I can only send a limited amount of short text messages for the price of € 7.50. Most devices also support push technologies which will allow you to instantly receive emails, just like those damn short text messages.

Did I already mention the maximum number of characters of short (160) text messages..?

Too bad..

• Too bad those big firms fool people all the time and always will succeed at it.
• Too bad the herd only walks in one direction.
• Too bad it costs me more money when replying a short text message.

This is imho just as rediculous as claiming a color.