Have you been wondering why it is sometimes costing you 25 cents to send a text message or have you been surprised by a twenty page bill caused by your teenage daughter trying to break a text message record? Well you’re not the only one.

Democratic Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin is making an attempt to figure out what is going on with why those 160 character texts cost so much. Next Tuesday representatives of Verizon, At&t, Sprint and T-Mobile will be getting grilled by a Senate committee on why such a small amount of transmitted data can cost so much.

Depending on your plan you can be paying $19.95 per month for unlimited texts, but if you’re on a pay as you go plan, sending and receiving a text message can be costing you up to 25 cents. Text messaging has jumped with 17 billion texts recorded in 2000 to an astonishing 500 billion texts in 2004 and it doesn’t seem to be slowing. With use jumping up so much, Senator Kohl is wondering why prices aren’t changing.

So we’re generally not in favor of our guvs going after our businesses around here, but I wouldn’t mind getting a bit of relief from my daughters’ LG KS360 bills. Who new she could type so fast?

[via News Junkie]