Bell Mobility and Telus, two of Canada’s big guns in wireless, will soon be charging their customers for incoming text messages. Currently if you are a pay per text customer, meaning you do not have a text message bundle, you only pay for messages sent, not messages received. But as of August, there will be a fifteen cent charge for each text message that you receive. Bell’s new incoming charge goes into effect on the 8th, with Telus rolling their new charge out on the 24th of August.

The reason given for this new charge is the explosion of text messages that Canadian’s are sending. According to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, in 2003 Canadians sent 352 million text messages. That number rose substantially to ten billion in 2007. And in the first three months of 2008, there have been more than four billion texts sent by Canadians.

I have a text bundle, so these new charges won’t affect me. But I really don’t think it’s fair to charge people something that they basically have no control over. If you don’t have a bundle and I text you, I don’t see why you should be charged for it. It would make more sense to me to increase the cost of sending a text by fifteen cents. But with the limited amount of wireless providers in Canada, there really isn’t much cell phone users can do right now, except ask their friends not to text them so much.