Comment by microtonal
3 years ago
I think that differs very much per country. The last time I have received an SMS from a human in NL must have been a decade ago. In many European countries, sending SMS was quite expensive, leading to early and very wide adoption of WhatsApp.
It's definitely in use in Europe, but it depends. I and my wife use SMS extensively, that's simply because we both use very cheap phone plans without a built-in data plan - i.e. no internet unless we have wi-fi (the pro side of that is that the yearly phone expenses is in the (equivalent of) low tens of dollars, not hundreds of dollars). When we're networked we use Line messaging.
My wife's boss communicates with all her employees by SMS (mass SMS - works like group communication, both ways).
AddEdit: Airlines send their notifications and links to boarding passes etc. via SMS. Dentist and doctor appointments, other public office appointments (e.g. my upcoming passport renewal), document notifications (from pension fund insurance companies for example), public warnings ("Toxic fire nearby - close your windows"), and more, are via SMS where I live.
Huh, how cheap is that? I’m almost always in wifi range, so I got the cheapest plan I could find in Germany (4€/month, so 48€/year), and even that still includes 1 GB of data (I do need the data, to sync my shopping list for example, but I’m curious how low one can go :D).
The cheapest (as in 0€/month) plan would probably be a SIM from Netzclub, but that's financed via advertisements. And then there was Congstar's "Prepaid wie ich will" (the 1st generation), which offered a "free messaging option" (1 GB / month, but only 32 kb/s) you could book every month. You just had to keep the SIM alive by topping up your credit by 15€ every 15 months (iirc). The unthrottled data options for this plan were expensive though.
I use discotel for years now, it is basically a prepaid with automated recharge from bank invoice on O2/Eplus. Thanks to being a prepaid you always got the option to switch you setup via packets every 30 days or 4 weeks (have to check that again, it was a fixed day amount and not based on calander months anymore).
So if I'm not traveling I stay with the cheapest data option for my occasionally otg stuff and on heavy travel months I choose larger packages, because I found myself using more often, for example as access point to notebook.
I also have an Kaufland (Telekom) Prepaid card, that said it would provide basic, very slow internet, for free so that text messages over chat works, bur I don't know if I got the wrong APN settings, it has problems in my second slot or it only works if you top it up regularly, but that internet and rest never really worked, even the account management over the website doesn't really work for me.
Most European countries have had unlimited SMS way before messaging apps where a thing
Not true at all. Most european countries are still pay per message.
Maybe on prepaid (pay per use) SIM cards.
Even cheapest monthly subscriptions have at least 500 messages per month bundled, with more typical monthly plans (~$15/mo) having unlimited calls, SMS/MMS messages and around 30 GB of 4G/5G data.
As far as I know Belgium, France, Germany, the UK, Greece and I think Spain and Italy have very popular unlimited sms phone plans.
Damn
That was ages ago. Most people have unlimited text messages these days (SMS, not MMS).
Yes, but the point is that in some countries this happened so late that everyone already switched to Whatsapp before SMS became effectively free. And once everyone is on Whatsapp there's no point in switching back to SMS.
Not in most countries I've been...
It became common to get atleast 1000 sms in your plan, combined with maybe 100mb of data back them, then unlimited sms with 1gb of data, and then slowly data went upwards while sms can't go up from "unlimited". 100MB is not enough to leave "the internet" running 24/7 on your phone, so internet-based chat services were unusable for general reachability back then (we're talking about early symbian and stuff like msn messenger era), and you just sent an SMS (becase 1000 is enough for everyone... except teenage girls back then(.
Definitely not per country: I regularly use SMS from NL.
> In many European countries, sending SMS was quite expensive, leading to early and very wide adoption of WhatsApp.
Yes, but data tariffs were also expensive, while you can send SMS with regular (no-data) tariff.
NL is rather small sample to, say, larger countries like Poland that use SMS quite frequently. And depending on carrier, SMS texting most likely will be completely free with most of the current plans.
Signal's rationale is just Signal's own reluctance to build an umbrella messenger. And given they do drop SMS, still won't introduce usernames it's very hard to actually sell it as a WhatsApp replacement.
And now, with WhatsApp supporting password protected cloud backups and up to 2Gb attachments, I'd say Signal will loose the userbase it acquired during the hype and Musk tweet.
In fact, during 2020 Belarus protests, Signal did nothing to support it's own operations during internet semi-blackout in the country, while Telegram tweaked their server side to provide at least some possibility to know what was happening in big cities. So what are the values of Signal — I don't even know. But they sure did support pillagers and rioters in the USA.
To be even more brazen, Signal is not Apple. They stopped innovating. And they don't have enough political power to convince people do things the new way. Even their zero knowledge server is worthless. Check out the story on FBI cracking down on the leader of some right wing proud boys type of armed group. They tracked him and then compelled to give up access to Signal.
Their innovation stopped at providing solid cryptography that was adopted by most decent messengers already. And they aren't visionaries with cancelling SMS.
UPD: the funniest part is that the service that drops the SMS support still relies on SMS to provide account registration.
This is just an unprecedented level of sarcasm.
Being such a small operation, I think they're making a great decision by focusing on what matters most. "Most startups die by lack of focus". I very much believe this is their first public step towards breaking up with phone number based identity.
>Being such a small operation, I think they're making a great decision by focusing on what matters most.
Currently, it looks like they are focusing on social networking features: stories, emoji stuff, better link previews. Basically everything that competition already did. The roadmap is not public, so I wouldn't take guesses as what may come next. But...
..."dropping support of X as a feature" is some kind of new transcendent approach to product development incomprehensible to common earthlings.
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Enlighten me please, how can you register with a username and without a phone number in WhatsApp?
Completely agree with your assessment.
Probably per person than per country.