Carrier Charging Texting for iMessages

I could honestly care less if you believe the actual stated facts or not. You guys have failed to comprehend my post. AT&T outright told me that they know that their system is billing for sms texts when customers are sending imessages. As originally stated, I obviously had the 'send as sms' feature disabled in the iphone 4's settings for imessage.

By the way, I don't live my life hanging out on forums looking to gain acknowledgement for high posting. But you obviously don't know anything about me and my experience. Just for your information, I have worked for both AT&T and Sprint Nextel doing technical support. I also did technical writing and quality assurance for hardware and software.

So go on little boys back to your planet and make yourselves happy by thinking you know more than anybody.

People in the real world know the truth.

I'm sure you were outstanding at your job. I could honestly care less about you and your experience.

So please explain HOW they can magically determine that the data packets just sent were an iMessage and not a facebook message, or a web page loading.

Methinks thou art full of thyself.

The only way any carrier could bill for a true iMessage, sent over the 3G network, would be to employ sniffing software on a very large scale. Can it be done, yes. However, to do so would not only be highly controversial(inviting congress to hold hearings, if done in the US), but such is against net neutrality. No doubt the carriers despise iMessage, for it has the ability to erode a large portion of their revenue. However, given the potential consequences, I find it hard to believe any carrier, at least in the US, would employ sniffing software to bill for this.

I agree. Data sent over the ethers go out in numerous small packets of binary information. Each packet is mixed in with the thousands of other packets from other transmissions from other devices. Unless each packet is analyzed and put back together (kind of like sending a letter over the post by first running it through a shredder and mailing each individual paper speck, and then having it all put back together at the receiving end using knowledge of how the each speck fits in the final product), something that's possible but very time intensive, I very much doubt the carriers do this.

Since messages, even sent out as iMessages, may be rerouted as SMS via 3G data due to any number of circumstances, I suspect that is what's happening.

I'll repeat again to experienced people here - I AM BEING CHARGED BY VODAFONE FOR IMESSAGES.

Simple as that.

As an aside, they recognise the problem, and are looking into it, but please don't dismiss posters as idiots because you can't comprehend that this could happen.

It is happening!

We're not dismissing you as idiots. We're surmising that what appear to be going as iMessages, for one reason or another, are not. The carrier's simply don't have the capability to do that. If anything, there must be a bug in iMessage that is causing SMS messages to appear to be iMessages.

I don't want to get into a fight here, but I can attest to TWO CARRIERS telling me that they are charging for iMessages, and I am not happy. Both O2, in the UK, and AT&T have told me that they are charging me for iMessages. I don't know how, am not a technogeek, but I assure you, I will learn how this can be done.

My wife and I have iPhone 4s and both are running version 5.0.1. AT&T are billing us for the iMessages for the past 2 months since we activated the iPhones. This is true because we text to friends who are also on iPhones and the text windows came up as Blue with 'iMessage' appearing. We have confirmed this.

This is very disappointing. Apple is pitching iMessage and Siri and both features do not work in my opinion. We are looking into returning the iPhones adn switching to Android.

If you are going to switch, go with Windows mobile or Blackberry. If you are disappointed in iOS, I can almost guarantee you will be disappointed with Android.

But to be honest, threatening to switch really doesn't mean that much in a user-to-user tech support forum.

Well I just want to throw in that Three UK ARE NOT charging for iMessages as i've just checked my bill, and i really don't see how other carriers can as it justs data.

This is all rather confusing... 😕

The carrier cannot determine what app you are using to send or receive data from.

A quick Google search of this problems brings up a few results regarding AT&T and charging for iMessages, but it doesn't seem to be a widespread problem.

The same App is used for both SMS and iMessage messages.

It is not impossible for there to be an issue with the app that charges for iMessages when they are sent over the carriers network.

It is also confusing to see that you can have phone to phone conversations to the same device using both methods.

Update: Verizon has credited me for these, indicating they have seen this occur a few times.