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Comment by stef25 | Hacker News Reader

> SMS

Here in EU you pay for that. Soon as you send an image, you get charged extra. Completely useless compared to Whatsapp

Exactly. Here in Europe, SMS feels like the fax machine of mobile communications.

Here in EU even the 5 €/month phone plans have unlimited SMS. As soon as you want to talk to someone without Whatsapp, you need to figure out which other apps they're on. Completely useless compared to SMS

Have you considered that the EU isn't one country?

In Ireland on my otherwise very generous mobile phone account I'm charged for multimedia SMS texts. They're not included in my SMS bundle.

Multimedia "texts" are actually MMS. In fact, if you send more than 160 characters, those are also MMS because it's an extension of the SMS standard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service

It is not unusual for there to be hosting or intermediate storage of images and other files, and from the phone you may tap a link or something to download/access that file, instead of having it automatically download and appear immediately, due to bandwidth and resource constraints.

Aren’t SMS that are over 160 characters being concatenated? There used to be a standard for that.

Generally yes.

I guess a phone/app could exist that does convert to MMS instead, though, since the app can make that decision.

In France, I'm "charged" for MMS, too. But that's actually considered "data", so it's deducted from the "internet" envelope which is quite generous (at least for my needs: I have multiple dozens of GB for under 10 € a month, of which I only ever went above 10 when backing up photos during a vacation with no wifi).

I'm not talking about the EU... That alone proves my point. SMS is/was more expensive worldwide.

Yes, but there are also plenty of countries where mobile data or even smartphones aren't nearly as universal as they might be in the places where most people use whatsapp. There, people use mostly SMS and phone calls. Whatsapp and the like are the thing you use when SMS/calls would be too expensive, so international.

Both of these exist, as do middle grounds between them.

I'm in only one WhatsApp group with someone local, everyone else in my chats is from abroad. Yet I'm from a country with dirt cheap data and nearly universal smartphone ownership. People just don't use WA here for whatever reason. But drive an hour across the border and suddenly everyone is on WhatsApp.

depends where; in France you can get unlimited SMS/MMS/calls, plus 350Go of data, for 20€/month [0]. it's surprising the market hasn't developed likewise in other (European) countries; I (genuinely) wonder why − perhaps legal issues of some sort?

edit: okay, sending MMS isn't always free, depends on the countries[1]. still free for USA, Europe, Canada, etc.

[0]: https://mobile.free.fr/fiche-forfait-free

[1]: https://mobile.free.fr/docs/bt/tarifs.pdf

I think it’s more historical at this point. 20 years ago SMS was expensive in Europe as we had cheap plans and expensive calls/texts vs US which had expensive plans but free calls/texts. That made things like WhatsApp take off in Europe while Americans would just SMS.

(Although most Americans have iPhones so just transparently avoid SMS for most of their conversations.)

There is no in the EU here. I had unlimited SMS in a sub 20€ plan more than a decade ago in France. I now have unlimited sms, unlimited calls and unlimited data in a sub 15€ plan.

I still only use WhatsApp because it’s a lot better than sms.

SMS is text only. If you're sending an image, you're not using SMS, you're using MMS.

There are phone deals that include unlimited SMS messages, but not MMS.

Try searching for that message you send 5 years ago in Whatsapp vs SMS. Retrieval speed is unmatched. SMS wins.

Now try, exporting all your whatsapp messges to standard format that can be interpreted in any text editor. Again, SMS wins.

Looking for the abusive messages a nasty acquitance sent you? Again, SMS wins.

Same in LATAM.

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