T-Mobile Hikes Text Price To 20 Cents Each

T-Mobile USA has raised the price of sending text messages from $0.15 to $0.20, the last of the country's four big carriers to do so. The 33 percent price hike will go into effect on August 29 for those customers without a text bundle, or for those who exceed their bundle limit.

Just three years ago, sending a text via the four major carriers cost $0.10 each. In 2006, they upped it to $0.15. In October last year, Sprint ( NYSE: S) began charging $0.20, with Verizon ( NYSE: VZ) and AT&T ( NYSE: T) quickly following.

CrunchGear did a bit of math and worked out that at $0.20 each, a text message with its 160 bytes of data max is the equivalent of paying $1310.72 for 1 MB of data, if the carriers charged for data downloads at the same rate they charged for text messaging.

So, will the price increase?a change in the terms and service agreement--mean that disgruntled customers will be able to get out of paying an early termination fee if they choose to walk away from T-Mobile? Not exactly. "Depends on the customer's usage and terms of the customer's agreement with us," a T-Mob representative said to RCR.