If you just need to receive an SMS but don’t actually need a cellular network, Google Voice is free.

If you can stomach $3/mo + tax (totaling a little over $40/year), UltraMobile PayGo is the cheapest consumer option I’ve seen. It’s a T-Mobile owned MVNO. It comes with 100MB, 100 minutes and 100 text messages per month, and is pay as you go after that.

Past that, I’d look into IoT cellular options.

Then you'll have to be the change you want to see in the world. Otherwise, it's not coming back because it gives accountants, executives and investors nightmares about the bottom line.

The voip provider I use charges about $1/month for a (US/CA) phone number and $1.50/month for e911 service; my voip provider charges me $10 or $25 or something when the balance is low. A large cell phone company may have somewhat lower costs for those services, but I think the pricing floor is probably $3/month that has to come from somewhere.

T-Mobile used to have a plan for you, but they stopped offering it to new customers in 2014; it does have a yearly minimum, but once you added $100 in topups, the minimum was $10/year; I think my mom must have more minutes than she'll ever use, but she still has to add ~ 100 minutes per year. Similarly, I had a SIM from virgin mobile UK that I got in 2008 that would stay active as long as it had activity, which included receiving SMS (which was free!). I doubt those are still available either and mine lapsed when I stopped using the SIM as the phone I had it in was 2G only and I lost coverage.