Comment by munk-a
2 years ago
SMS rates are absolutely bonkers considering the technical way they're transmitted. The US is an outlier in SMS rates actually being reasonable (usually unlimited or close to) for consumers - but for the rest of the world the insane mark up on that communication method has mostly obsoleted it...
That'd be all well and good... the technology would die naturally, but all my American relatives continue to stubbornly use iMessage.
> for the rest of the world the insane mark up on that communication method has mostly obsoleted it...
For P2P communication. SMS is alive and well for B2C messaging, most importantly for 2FA OTP delivery, but also as a first line of defense against spam/bot account creation.
It's not a good solution to either problem, but it's slightly better than nothing (which apparently makes it good enough for many), so I suspect we're stuck with it for now.
> That'd be all well and good... the technology would die naturally, but all my American relatives continue to stubbornly use iMessage.
iMessage is not SMS, though. It just uses phone numbers as identifiers, but so do many other popular over-the-top messengers, including the most popular one globally.
To clarify - iMessage does not use SMS if you're going from Apple to Apple device and both devices have data/wifi available. iMessage refuses to support messaging to Android clients and defaults to SMS for these messages.
I've got an Android phone so all iMessage transmissions come across as SMS (or MMS).
Ah, I see what you mean. That's not what I'd call iMessage though, that's just SMS:
The iOS application is called "Messages"; iMessage is the over-the-top Apple-exclusive messaging service.
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My phone runs Android, I'm pretty much forced to use SMS in order to communicate with anyone who uses an iPhone and that's most of my family. While it can be argued that iMessage provides a good enough experience on an iPhone for most people, I have wondered if they are the one thing keeping SMS alive.
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> For P2P communication. SMS is alive and well for B2C messaging, most importantly for 2FA OTP delivery, but also as a first line of defense against spam/bot account creation.
In Brazil, businesses use Whatsapp to communicate with consumers. You order pizza and book doctor appointments over whatsapp
> stubbornly use iMessange.
Personally, I prefer it over downloading yet another client, dealing with additional credentials, wondering about who can access my messages, and so on and so forth…
And all that just to message the handful of people that I know who use <popular in other country third party app>.
If only someone would release a universal protocol that the app's native messaging apps could utilize to eliminate the need for these 3rd party messaging apps. Oh, right, it's called RCS and Apple refuses to support it.
RCS is anything but universal. It requires the explicit cooperation of mobile phone providers, which makes it a non-solution in many scenarios – including usage on any device that happens to not be a phone.
RCS is exactly what it says on the box: A modern successor to SMS. That does not make it a good modern instant messenger.
Apple announced today they are going to support RCS https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/16/apple-rcs-coming-to-iphone/
RCS is better than SMS no doubt but lets not pretend it is on the same level as iMessage. Lack of end to end encryption alone makes RCS a dated standard
Good news, Apple just announced they'll start supporting RCS next year.
https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/breaking-apple-will-...
I see that you feel strongly about RCS, but as far as I know even some of the bigger US carriers dont support the universal profile on all the Android devices they offer. So maybe you’ll get your wish some point after carriers align on RCS.
RCS the “universal protocol” is not end to end encrypted.
Google has made some proprietary extensions to RCS to support end to end encryption but this is not the same thing.
> Oh, right, it's called RCS and Apple refuses to support it.
No one wants to support it. Even telecoms don't want to support it.
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Literally nobody wants RCS except Google and a handful of HN commenters. It’s so unwanted that Google had to scrap their original plan of making the carriers host the infrastructure and do it themselves, because the carriers didn’t give a shit.
(And even Google doesn’t really have any love for RCS, they crawled back to it as a fallback plan with their tail between their legs when their own proprietary lock-in messaging apps didn’t work out. Which makes their attempts to shame Apple into adopting it pretty hilariously disingenuous.)
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> only someone would release a universal protocol
Nobody wants this. Universal access means universal access for spammers. iMessage won over SMS because of cost and spam filtering.
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I think I understand your comment, since iMessage isn't SMS, but defaults to SMS for those not using it.
There are opensource self hosted solutions like BlueBubble that allow reasonably secure communication through iMessage to the other chat platforms on desktop/Android etc. I have zero affiliation, but I know others who happily use it. There are also less secure and paid solutions I can't speak to.
https://bluebubbles.app/faq/
For the purpose of 2FA and account registration let’s view it as a tax for fraud prevention, where the real value in SMS is in verifying someone’s identity rather than transmitting messages
If SMS actually worked for this purpose, it would be acceptable. However, SMS provides no guarantees about: 1) If it actually gets delivered 2) If it is delivered to the intended recipient 3) 1 and 2 without anyone reading or tampering the message while in transit
Now, even if stars align, your SMS ends up on a route where nobody is mitm-ing or hijacking it, the telco systems work and it gets delivered, it is STILL not a guarantee of identity. It simply verifies that you have somehow got access to a particular phone number.
Just because consumers get unlimited SMS doesn’t mean businesses get that. The telcos are ruthless about extracting their pound of flesh at business rates.
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