Our telephonic world has been turned upside down. Nielsen Mobile, the self proclaimed "world's largest provider of syndicated consumer research to the telecom and mobile media markets," says in the second quarter of this year a typical US cellphone user sent 357 text messages while placing 204 calls. Text messaging isn't just more prevalent than cell phone calls, it's much more prevalent!

According to Nielsen Mobile texting overtook voice last winter. That's a trend not likely to reverse anytime soon. The transition away from voice is happening at a blindingly quick pace. In the first quarter of 2006, texting was 25% of the market. This spring it was 64%! At the same time the number of voice plus text originations per phone went from 263 to 561. We're using our phones a lot more.

As you might guess the younger you are the more texting dominates your conversations. Teens 13-17 send on average 1742 texts a month. If you're 65+ that number shrinks to 14.

It's no wonder with this increasing demand cell carriers continue to raise the price for text messages--because they can. In May Dr. Nigel Bannister, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University of Leicester in England calculated the cost of texting and compared it to data downloaded from the Hubble Space Telescope.

"The bottom line is texting is at least 4 times more expensive than transmitting data from Hubble, and is likely to be substantially more than that.

The maximum size for a text message is 160 characters, which takes 140 bytes because there are only 7 bits per character in the text messaging system, and we assume the average price for a text message is 5p. There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that's 1 million/140 = 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte. At 5p each, that's £374.49 (currently $685.82) per MB - or about 4.4 times more expensive than the 'most pessimistic' estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs."

Take a look at cellphone packages. No two from separate carriers offer the same exact bundle of services. That makes comparison shopping nearly impossible. It's part of what's allowed the cost of texting to grow along with the voluminous profits texting produces.