4 ms·

I suppose you live in a country where the telcos offer free SMS. In Spain they cost money, so almost no one uses SMS for personal messaging. All the SMSs I get

• iforgotpassword 9y ago
  In Germany there's a bunch of different options when signing up with a provider, eg I have one where I pay 2€ extra per month for 100 SMS which is plenty for me. For 4€ I'd get like 300 or so. Its the same pricing for free minutes for domestic calls (normal landline or mobile, no service numbers obviously).
  • Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
    I think it's similar here, but 300 SMS/month (i.e., 10/day) wouldn't be even close to enough for the average Spanish user. Whatsapp usage is huge here. Many people do all their routine personal communication using it, and then they have a group for the family, a group for coworkers, a group for friends, a school parents group where they all complain about their kids' homework, etc. Of course, they also send photos and videos (which I'm not sure if are covered by SMS plans or you need that exotic thing called MMS). And even if it were enough, a Spanish user won't pay 2 or 4 € for something that they can get for free. In fact when Whatsapp had the idea of charging a symbolic amount and suspended access to some accounts due to not paying, people started switching to Telegram en masse (Telegram even went down due to that), then they gave back access and abandoned the idea of charging.