It’s either WhatsApp or Signal
Almost nothing in WhatsApp or Signal.
Whatsapp is not uncommon to be sure, but I would wager a significant portion of users in the United States have it installed because they chat with people overseas.
Signal & Telegram are pretty small userbases.
One of the "real" threads moved to WhatsApp after a couple of messages and the other was me forwarding one of the delivery updates from within the SMS app.
Sadly everyone I know is on WhatsApp and no one uses Signal.
Inbound texts from my bank etc come up as grey - no different to inbound iMessage so never actually noticed it.
I lived in Europe all my life and never heard of Messenger.
WhatsApp is pervasive. We get the WhatsApp logo shoved in our faces even while casually watching tv. Even TV programs and state institutions have WhatsApp contacts.
Messenger is the most popular chat app in France, Scandinavia and most of Eastern Europe. WhatsApp has the rest. Except Viber in Serbia and Belarus.
(Messenger is Facebook Messenger, everyone who has a Facebook account has it, though not necessarily in use on their phone.)
If you admit that WhatsApp is the dominant messaging app in the whole Europe except for a hand-full of countries, and still in spite of your admission you still try to pass Messenger as ubiquitous in Europe, you shouldn't be talking about generalizations.
Then again I only use iDevices at work, so whatever.
Why is it so hard to understand that your little life bubble isn't the whole world?
It's not that text messages aren't sent, it's just that they are only ever a fallback for when primary communication channels are not available.
Pretty much everyone's SMSes are just MFA codes, "your pizza is ready", "your package is delivered", and so on.
Almost nobody that talks to each other regularly uses SMS.
And we didn't even get to the point that the communications platform used instead of an open standard is owned by a single corporation - Facebook.
I'm yet another European and even though apps like WhatsApp and Signal are very popular, SMS is still used very often.
Apps like WhatsApp do have an advantage like better UX, group chat, better allowlists, online presence status indicators, multimedia support, and multi-platform support.
I'm from Argentina and here absolutely nobody uses SMS. As parent said, it's only used for 2FA, delivery notifications, etc (although some companies here do 2FA with whatsapp too).
OP claims no one uses SMS at, and your reply was "I agree, no one uses SMS except for all these reasons they message all the time".
Also, it makes no sense to claim that no one uses SMS just because some people also use another means of communication like WhatsApp or email. It would make as much sense as claiming no one uses WhatsApp because they spend more time on Instagram or Twitter.
> ...'from businesses to people'..
You see the problem in your comment?
person to person sms is pretty close to zero here as well
I agree that these times people communicate over Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp much more than through SMS but that has nothing to do with cost.
Also, if the goal is to have rich communication, like sending video and photo. If your network provider does not cover you for cellular data, I don't see how, the same content will go through anyway as it needs data...
The only difference of RCS compared to messaging service is that you use your phone number and the service is provided by your mobile telecom provider, but otherwise it is technically similar.
One last point is that, here, in Europe, people does not trust phone number as being a permanent reliable identification. Not so long ago people had to change numbers regularly when changing of provider or of offer.
I have WiFi only at home. At work i don't. Also there are shops where there is no WiFi nor cellular connection.