The old AT&T Wireless had free incoming texts (before they were bought by Cingular) which is part of the reason I never migrated over to Cingular. And IM apps on the iPhone like beejive, IM+, palringo, AIM, etc, all use data to send the IM's not texts, so you won't get charged for those. The only time you'd get charged a text, like people mentioned above, is if you were signed out of the AIM servers and you still have your screen name set to forward to your cell phone, then it forwards the IM's as texts since you're not actually logged onto the AIM server. But all the apps use data, so you don't have to worry there.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
IM counts as text MSG?
- Thread starter iMaconApple
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
No.
IMs only count as texts if you use your SMS to send the IMs. If you use an app like AIM it's merely data.
Way to come out all guns blazing and blow that one!
No.
IMs only count as texts if you use your SMS to send the IMs. If you use an app like AIM it's merely data.
Way to come out all guns blazing and blow that one!
Ya I know, silly me I don't know anything about AT&T.
Lulz
I'm not a supervisor there either.
Family Text Plan and Unlimited Data covers everything. Billing seems separate for TM & MMS at least on my bill......
Well I just pulled up my bill online and see I have 7 text messages sent yesterday. I know I sent messages via Beehive a lot more than that... good thing you're not a supervisor then!
I was talking about aim because that's what the op was talking about. If they haven't been billed as text then that's rad. Most IMs on AT&T are billed as text.
The thing is, it has nothing to do with specifically with AIM.
If you use a instant message client that sends IMs as texts (which none on the iPhone do, AFAIK), then you're charged texts.
If you use an instant message client that sends IMs as data (which all of the ones on the iPhone do, again AFAIK), then you're not charged texts.
So even if the OP mentioned AIM (which I don't see where they did), you need to figure out which client they're using. The OP mentioned the beejiveIM client, which uses data...
... which means AIM, Yahoo, etc are all not charged as texts.
If you want to give an insight as to how things work inside AT&T, if you could explain how in the hell an IP-based IM could somehow magically get routed through a short message service center that uses an entirely different protocol (and be billed as a text message), that'd be great.For sure they use data. Now sometimes they are charged as text. If and if that happens the charges are vaild. I was just giving an insight as to how it works from inside AT&T
"Now sometimes they are charged as text" .. with no further explanation .. is pretty weak.
Now how smart would it be for me to post that info on a public forum? Now as I reread the post I see that he was talking about ip based IM. Which will just be data, but if for whatever reason if was forwarded to his number via SMS then yes it would be text. Ofther than that, it's all data.
The confusion here comes from the fact that on most (if not all) other AT&T phones, the built-in IM application is designed to send IMs as SMS messages. This is not true of the iPhone, which only has third-party IM applications designed to use your phone's data plan. These applications work the same whether you have cell service or wi-fi (they even work on the iPod Touch which has no text-message capability): they use your phone's active data connection.
To the OP: if you went over your text messaging limit, that could only be caused by incoming or outgoing messages sent/received through the Messages app on your iPhone.
If ChaSSe really is an AT&T supervisor, he needs to go back to training.
To the OP: if you went over your text messaging limit, that could only be caused by incoming or outgoing messages sent/received through the Messages app on your iPhone.
If ChaSSe really is an AT&T supervisor, he needs to go back to training.
huh? most people i know will txt over talking. it is very normal for my friends to rack up 5000 txts in 1month. it is very popular in the U.S.
Me and my friends just text also unless there is too much to type. I hate talking on the phone also. I average 2500-5000 texts a month, and I think it's very popular in the U.S. and so bad they are passing a law so you can't text and drive in my state. Sadly they need to pass this law because people don't have the common sense not to text and drive.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A400 Safari/528.16)
Zomg you did not search. This has been asked a million times!!!!!!
Fail.
Zomg you did not search. This has been asked a million times!!!!!!
Fail.