2015 is long after iMessage started, and “unlimited plans” were something that you had to pay a premium price for, they cost extra money. When iMessage first ca

2015 is long after iMessage started, and “unlimited plans” were something that you had to pay a premium price for, they cost extra money. When iMessage first came out, unlimited texting was not available on the standard/budget plans, and today it is. I mean, WiFi texting was a selling point of iMessage for a reason. They made a big deal out of being able to send messages for free. From my perspective in the US, I wasn’t even aware of WhatsApp at the time, and so it felt like iMessage was the primary force causing telcos to back off. (That and the fact that charging for SMS was stupid because the cheaper alternatives used more bandwidth.) WhatsApp might have in reality been a larger force, but I’m skeptical because WhatsApp was an app you had to go get, while iMessage was the built-in default way to send text messages. IPhone user base in 2011 was more than 2x larger than WhatsApp user base at the same time.