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I was living in Australia in 2000 and texting was more common than calling because it was cheaper to text than call. But in the US it was the opposite. You had
by flanbiscuit 2y ago
I was living in Australia in 2000 and texting was more common than calling because it was cheaper to text than call. But in the US it was the opposite. You had unlimited calling, but plans around that time had a different pricing scheme for texting (can't remember the exact details) so could be one reason why it took the US a bit longer to finally pick up texting. I remember it was about a year or 2 later that I felt texting started to become more common in the US.
- sien 2y agoYeah, I lived in Europe in 1999 and 2000 and then moved to the US. In the EU you could text people from different countries and it would often work. Then I moved to the US and the shock of not being able to text between networks was really something. That and writing cheques. I'd never written a cheque in Australia or Europe but you sort of had to in the US while electronic payments between banks were sorted in Australia in the 1990s. These days it seems when a technology appears it generally spreads more quickly.
- Tijdreiziger 2y ago> In the EU you could text people from different countries and it would often work. Wasn’t foreign texting expensive at the time?
- kortilla 2y agoTexting in network was a fixed rate per text (later unlimited) and then texting out of network was crazy like 10 cents a message. You thought blue bubble was bad, it literally cost you money to talk to people who chose another carrier. The texting culture had funny side effects then because of it. You would get roasted for multiple messages when one would suffice. :)
- lovehashbrowns 2y agoMy first cell phone bill was like $600 because my gf at the time used a different carrier. This was also back in the olden days of unlimited texting!! (Only after 9pm)
- Loudergood 2y agoInteresting I thought the main reason whatsapp took off outside the US was the texting costs.
- firefax 2y agoFacebook was big partly early on at places like CMU because unis were early adopters of ubiquitous wifi -- so FB messenger served as a free texting tool back when you'd have people tell you to put their last name as NOTEXT.