Worth pointing out that this problem is also present in Europe. We don't pay for incoming SMS's (thank god for that), but the telcos have an effective monopoly which they use and abuse to make sure no one can come up with any effective and profitable phone-based service (beyond those spam sites selling ring tones).

For example, they offer a way to charge customers via "Premium SMS", but the margins that they take on those are insanely high. See http://www.txtlocal.co.uk/prices/ for example... If you want to charge your customer 25p, you will only get about 7p of that. Makes Apple's 30% cut look almost free.

Telcos are, worldwide, abusive monopolies. Given that communications are so important to our society, I can't wait to see the back of them, and the beginning of a new era in communication innovation.