I live in a latin american country
THere is a fee for local calling (based on time only) and a fee for sending SMS (based on # of messages), and in the regular (only?) phone plan (which is about $8/mo I think) there are enough minutes/messages included in the plan that I never see more then a dollar or two in extra fees.
There's the blackberry plan on top of that (going away soon when my new iPhone arrives, yay) - but htat doesn't change SMS or Calling preferences - just adds unlimited data and the usual blackberry services.
Teh reason SMS & Data are different, historically, is because they are different. SMS was a way to cram a message in a single GSM packet. Very low-cost for the network to send. This was prior to data plans being available. No sustained network protocol for the end user -that's why there's a small character limit - it had to fit in a single packet. Providers globally reap huge profits on SMS, because actually sending SMS cost them nothing additional.
Data, OTOH, ends up costing them actual real bandwidth and resources