The price of what unlimited text messages should cost aside, the ala carte pricing of text messages (at least for US cell carriers) is definitely price gouging. It cost (at least at one point) ~25c to receive a text message. And I have received spam text messages. This creates a perverse incentive to the carrier to do nothing to block spammers on their SMS network.
Also, my wife has a pay-as-you-go plan and each text that she sends or receives counts as a minute of talk time. I have a hard time believing that setting up circuit from one end of the text to the other takes the same amount of resources as a minute of talk time. Shouldn't a minute of talk time also take up a circuit? Wouldn't a text occupy that circuit for a fraction of a minute?
This, by the way, is specific for the US. In Germany, and I believe in almost any other European country, only the sender pays for SMS and calls. I spent a year in the US and this was something I found quite irritating - being charged for receiving a call.
American cell-phone plans generally give you a fixed number of calling minutes (plus various other bonuses, such as free calling on nights and weekends), and once you go over the quota, you pay for receiving calls. I just checked out the cheapest individual plan for Verizon in my area, and they charge 45ยข per minute after your allowance is up.
I assume they set things up this way because cellphone numbers share the same number space in North America as landline numbers, so if it costs more to maintain a cellphone network, the operator cannot recover those extra costs entirely from people calling into it.
Also, my wife has a pay-as-you-go plan and each text that she sends or receives counts as a minute of talk time. I have a hard time believing that setting up circuit from one end of the text to the other takes the same amount of resources as a minute of talk time. Shouldn't a minute of talk time also take up a circuit? Wouldn't a text occupy that circuit for a fraction of a minute?