This week I put together an article about the recent fee changes to Apple’s App Store subscriptions policies. If you haven’t been keeping up, Apple changed the way the App Store handles subscriptions this week so that the company will take a 30 percent cut. It also included some stipulations that will make it very difficult for content providers to get iPhone subscribers through means other than the App Store, virtually forcing the 30 percent fee upon third party content providers.

The news reminded me of the ways American corporations gouge consumers on tech. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

While we’re talking about cellular service, why not talk about our cellular plans? You’ve no doubt heard that texting fees are a total ripoff, but let me remind just how bad things are. SMS messages are nothing more than data – tiny bits of data at that – sent along their own control channel in the wireless spectrum. That same control is used, on many networks, to tell your phone that it has service. Do you see where this is going? Let me use a simple analogy. Let’s say my friend Joe sends me a letter every day to let me know he is still alive. One day, he starts writing personal messages at the bottom of the letter, things like “lol y u so funny,” but for adding that personal message, an insignificant amount of ink on a letter he was sending anyway, the post office charges him 20 cents for sending it and charges me 10 cents for receiving it. SMS transmission costs the carriers almost nothing, but they’ll charge me $20 a month for unlimited nothing. That little tirade of mine doesn’t even address the fact that I’m paying for an unlimited data plan, yet I’m getting charged again for sending miniscule amounts of data in a text.

If you think it’s like this everywhere, think again. A 2009 study by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development showed that Americans pay more for cellular service than any of the 30 member countries it surveyed. For an average, medium-use package – 780 voice minutes, 600 text messages, 8 multimedia messages – Americans paid an average of $53 a month. Consumers in the Netherlands paid $11.

It doesn’t stop at cell service, either. To read more about our tech expenditures, head over to the Bullz-Eye gadgets channel.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski sounds pretty pleased with steps wireless providers have taken over the past week. In a speech today he complimented AT&T for its recent 3G over VoIP commitment and Verizon and Google for upcoming Android headsets that will support Google Voice. The speech was among the most pejorative things I’ve read (get the full text here), and I couldn’t help feeling insulted at all the back-clapping going on.

We’re still a long way from a level of consumer respect that I find acceptable, so comments like the following rub me raw:

That’s because all of you are changing the world. You’ve turned clunky one-trick handsets into sleek and powerful mini-PCs. You’ve made the Internet mobile, freeing broadband from the desktop and making it possible to imagine a world where the Internet is available to anyone, anywhere, anytime.

You’re making that possible through the billions you’ve invested, and the billions you plan to invest.

I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t realize how nice the wireless companies have been. It’s almost like they aren’t making billions back through ridiculous airtime and data charges, egregious texting plans, and obscene service outages and dropped call rates. Granted, I don’t line nearly as many pockets in Washington as these companies do, but Genachowski addresses them like spoiled children. “Great job, Timmy. You only punched three girls today, not four, and frankly, two of them deserved it.”

I’m all for government support of broadband expansion and commitments to improved service, but let’s not coddle big wireless. Sure AT&T opened up to VoIP, but it took an FCC investigation to get it there. I pulled crap like this on my parents all the time. Sure, I was nice to my siblings, but as soon as I was alone I was scribbling swear words on the bathroom wall in red Sharpie.

Source: Reuters