While most European carriers offer rich SMS subscription plans, the price of those small text message emitted from/received on mobile phone are very expensive (today) in USA. Well, it was not true one or two years ago when Verizon and AT&T were promoting SMS in USA. Today both carriers are suspected to have colluded in setting prices for SMS. Indeed, any European customers would be amazed by the price of a single SMS in USA: 20 cents! Both carriers argue that most SMS are included in their standard subscription plans, however recent reports shown on CNN and other TC channels demonstrated than many customers seen their mobile phone bills doubling over the last year. It seems that long time customers of both carriers, running on old format subscription plan were over charged because such text message were not included in their original contract.
