AT&T's Text Messaging Plans Are a Regressive Tax

The most active senders and receivers of texts are nonwhite, earn incomes below $30,000, and do not have a high school education, says a 2011 study conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. AT&T, to use but one example, charged $1,310 per megabyte to send text messages in 2008. In 2011, the company effectively doubled that amount. And that's assuming you're even on a monthly plan. Most low-income users are almost certainly on prepaid devices, where fees for text messages are even higher. Yet it costs the carrier virtually nothing to handle text messages. This raises an obvious question. Are text messages a regressive tax on the poor that helps subsidize cell service for the rest of us?