[kingfishr]

I'm American, and I've never paid for an SMS in my life.

You can block texts via your carrier so that people can't cost you 20 cents or whatever by sending you a text. I'm pretty sure that all phone companies have this. This is what I did before the age of smartphones.

Now I still block texts, but I use Google Voice and only give people my Google voice number, never my real phone number. I receive texts through the gvoice app on my phone. Calls go through gvoice (and I can filter/redirect them). I never have to bitch about people costing me money by sending me texts :)