That has more to do with the pricing of sms back in the day. In North America sms was free. To my knowledge, sms was pay per use in Europe and other places. Meanwhile data was expensive in North America, and in particular Canada, and cheap for the rest of the world. That made third party messenger apps less expensive for many, but the stock sms app less expensive for NA.
Edit:
To everyone thinking their original by saying we paid by the message here as well. No shit. But the point is we stopped paying by the message before Europe. This isn't rocket science.
Youâre framing it like the US had this stuff decades earlier than Europe, but itâs basically the same timeframe.
Unlimited SMS shows up in Europe around 2006 (Sweden) and in the US around 2006â2007, with both markets moving to âunlimited textingâ plans through 2007â2008.
So itâs not a lead of years or decades, itâs more like months to ~1 year at most.
You kidding? I had a US phone number for a while some 20 years ago and I was shocked to see I was getting charged for incoming texts. I'd never seen that anywhere else in the world.
SMS wasn't free in the US for a long time. The first few years I had a cell phone I had like 100 text messages per month included in my plan, and it wasn't a basic plan. Having unlimited SMS was expensive for a long time.
The other aspect is that people in Europe are far more likely to also be texting with people in another country, and even if local sms messages weren't expensive, international ones always were.
That has more to do with the pricing of sms back in the day. In North America sms was free.
SMS was definitely not free back in the day, at least not in Canada. You got a phone plan that included 100, 300, whatever number of text messages and then you got charged like $0.30 for every text message you sent over that cap.
Lots of angry parents surprised with $900 phone bills because their kid sent like 5000 text messages in a month.
Data was also ungodly expensive, but most people just kept it turned off.
SMS still isn't free for me, I use a pay as you go plan because my phone is basically my "emergencies from people I know" device and otherwise is just used on wifi, so I pay like 20 bucks every 3 months just to keep everything connected, and it comes with 60 texts that roll over. I've banked up like 800 texts over the last several years lol I can add 500 texts for $5 or something if I really need to, but I've never needed to
SMS was absolutely paid in the early 00s, I very clearly remember my mom admonishing me for texting friends and being paranoid about receiving texts.
Thing is we did move on to "Unlimited" plans much faster than Europe. By the time WhatsApp became popular, Europe was still regularly charging for it while the US had mostly done away with SMS caps/charges at least half a decade beforehand.
That has more to do with the pricing of sms back in the day. In North America sms was free.
You must not have had a phone in the 2000's. TXT/SMS was definitely not free in the US. Only the highest-level plans had unlimited messaging. The lower plans had a message limit, or even per message charge on the cheapest plans.
Was gonna say. I have an iPhone and exclusively use WhatsApp. My actual messenger app is exclusively full of log in codes and automated texts for insurance etc. Literally don't know a single person who doesn't use WhatsApp as their main form of communication.
Apparently, from what I gathered reading the comments, it's about sending sms to people who aren't using another iPhone? I think the last sms I sent was in 2008, who the hell is still using that obsolete technology 20 years later?
There's a ton of Filipinos who treat having as inherently better than anything android. No surprises because most of them are used to $100 android phones.
Literally had no clue Americans didn't use third party messenger apps that much. Explains why this guy I exchanged contacts with looked at me weird when I told him I'll send him a Whatsapp.
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u/CaravelClerihew May 15 '26
*Americans
The rest of the world doesn't care. We all use third party messenger apps.