Mobile Phones - Everyone Texts
Having lost my original cell phone, I bought a local phone and spent a few months getting acquainted with the mysteries of the infernal device. I now had a permanent local phone number and a chinese-capable cell phone. Of course, all this means is that I now have yet another avenue for spam in my life.
Spam was bad enough by e-mail but now I find myself getting SMS spam all them time. Since it's in Chinese, I have to make my co-workers endure my spam by asking them to decipher the message in case they are important. In most other countries (besides the US), it seems that SMS texting has become a common way for organizations to communicate with their customers/citizens. I've seen that the Beijing government has started texting announcements of catastropic events (like when a hole opened up on one of the downtown freeways), thank you's for public participation and other general announcements. My phone company uses texting to let me know it's time to pay the bill, warn me about minutes usage and other announcements. Unfortunately, these messages are mixed in with travel offers, shopping sales, and "sexy service" (as one co-worker put it). Do I feel bad about forcing my co-workers to sort through my spam? ... yes but I don't really have a choice.
About three months ago, I decided that I should finally take the plunge and start texting. I was forced to do this because it seems that noone has voicemail in China (yours truly included) and people were starting to get annoyed that I was burning up their minutes with simply queries. You will all be proud to find out that I have now fully embraced texting and am up to 500 texts/month (yes, more than 20/day).
For those of you wondering, texts in China cost .1 yuan/message. So, my habit is currently costing me 50 yuan/month. I've searched for package deals to reduce this cost but it seems that China Mobile knows people want to text and isn't about to offer any plans to make it cheaper. I'll continue at a later date about some of my discoveries about this new texting universe and the games you can play with people.
Spam was bad enough by e-mail but now I find myself getting SMS spam all them time. Since it's in Chinese, I have to make my co-workers endure my spam by asking them to decipher the message in case they are important. In most other countries (besides the US), it seems that SMS texting has become a common way for organizations to communicate with their customers/citizens. I've seen that the Beijing government has started texting announcements of catastropic events (like when a hole opened up on one of the downtown freeways), thank you's for public participation and other general announcements. My phone company uses texting to let me know it's time to pay the bill, warn me about minutes usage and other announcements. Unfortunately, these messages are mixed in with travel offers, shopping sales, and "sexy service" (as one co-worker put it). Do I feel bad about forcing my co-workers to sort through my spam? ... yes but I don't really have a choice.
About three months ago, I decided that I should finally take the plunge and start texting. I was forced to do this because it seems that noone has voicemail in China (yours truly included) and people were starting to get annoyed that I was burning up their minutes with simply queries. You will all be proud to find out that I have now fully embraced texting and am up to 500 texts/month (yes, more than 20/day).
For those of you wondering, texts in China cost .1 yuan/message. So, my habit is currently costing me 50 yuan/month. I've searched for package deals to reduce this cost but it seems that China Mobile knows people want to text and isn't about to offer any plans to make it cheaper. I'll continue at a later date about some of my discoveries about this new texting universe and the games you can play with people.
posted by agoel at
8:00 PM
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