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stef25 | 1 month ago

> SMS

Here in EU you pay for that. Soon as you send an image, you get charged extra. Completely useless compared to Whatsapp

discuss

Exactly. Here in Europe, SMS feels like the fax machine of mobile communications.

franga2000|1 month ago

Here in EU even the 5 €/month phone plans have unlimited SMS. As soon as you want to talk to someone without Whatsapp, you need to figure out which other apps they're on. Completely useless compared to SMS

Have you considered that the EU isn't one country?

thedonncha|1 month ago

In Ireland on my otherwise very generous mobile phone account I'm charged for multimedia SMS texts. They're not included in my SMS bundle.

hei-lima|1 month ago

I'm not talking about the EU... That alone proves my point. SMS is/was more expensive worldwide.

mbivert|1 month ago

depends where; in France you can get unlimited SMS/MMS/calls, plus 350Go of data, for 20€/month [0]. it's surprising the market hasn't developed likewise in other (European) countries; I (genuinely) wonder why − perhaps legal issues of some sort?

edit: okay, sending MMS isn't always free, depends on the countries[1]. still free for USA, Europe, Canada, etc.

[0]: https://mobile.free.fr/fiche-forfait-free

[1]: https://mobile.free.fr/docs/bt/tarifs.pdf

laurencerowe|1 month ago

I think it’s more historical at this point. 20 years ago SMS was expensive in Europe as we had cheap plans and expensive calls/texts vs US which had expensive plans but free calls/texts. That made things like WhatsApp take off in Europe while Americans would just SMS.

(Although most Americans have iPhones so just transparently avoid SMS for most of their conversations.)

StopDisinfo910|1 month ago

There is no in the EU here. I had unlimited SMS in a sub 20€ plan more than a decade ago in France. I now have unlimited sms, unlimited calls and unlimited data in a sub 15€ plan.

I still only use WhatsApp because it’s a lot better than sms.

abanana|1 month ago

SMS is text only. If you're sending an image, you're not using SMS, you're using MMS.

There are phone deals that include unlimited SMS messages, but not MMS.

bossyTeacher|1 month ago

Try searching for that message you send 5 years ago in Whatsapp vs SMS. Retrieval speed is unmatched. SMS wins.

Now try, exporting all your whatsapp messges to standard format that can be interpreted in any text editor. Again, SMS wins.

Looking for the abusive messages a nasty acquitance sent you? Again, SMS wins.

hei-lima|1 month ago

Same in LATAM.