I agree that it is unreasonable, and is a bit shocked that there are countries where receiving an sms can cost you money... But a reasonable solution to incoming data is to enable NAT, it isn't much of a hinder for a tech savvy user and is otherwise better for the 99.99% of the users.
My phone (Nexus S) always responds to the pings I send. Which kind of makes sense, the default is to have a constant connection to google anyway (so that it can receive any push messages). Apparently google already made the decision that it is worth the battery drain. And android has already gotten plenty of bad reputation for applications misbehaving. While I'm sure some telcos are misbehaving in all ways imaginable as well it is probably nothing compared to the apps users gladly install for themselves.
> something must be broken if the customer is getting billed due to the environment beyond their control.
This is what happens when you debate random tangential topics online while hung over.. so basically I had no point to make, and you made me realize NAT is a pragmatic solution to the imaginary problem I'm complaining about.
> Presumably the application processor only awoke when a kernel timer fires
And of course for the reasons you point out, this presumption was obvious nonsense. :) Now I'm not sure what caused the behaviour I saw on the Dream.
My phone (Nexus S) always responds to the pings I send. Which kind of makes sense, the default is to have a constant connection to google anyway (so that it can receive any push messages). Apparently google already made the decision that it is worth the battery drain. And android has already gotten plenty of bad reputation for applications misbehaving. While I'm sure some telcos are misbehaving in all ways imaginable as well it is probably nothing compared to the apps users gladly install for themselves.