Is there any reason, beyond corporate greed, for SMS messages to cost so much?

If I get it right, an SMS message is just a short string of data, no different from a message we send in a messenger. If so, then what makes them so expensive? If we’d take Internet plans and consider how much data an SMS takes, we should pay tiny fraction of a cent for each message; why doesn’t that happen?

  • @viking
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    42 months ago

    Nobody I know uses it, seriously. Every person is using whatsapp, and a handful privacy minded ones are on signal.

    Not sure I’m getting your point though, I can answer on every single message protocol whenever I have time or feel like it?

    • Maeve
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      22 months ago

      I have a couple of friends and a family member on signal, the rest I text with, except for a neighbor who is too old to be great at it, and a blind friend. Oh and the elderly lady up the street. I guess my point is plenty of people use SMS, I guess it’s whatever people prefer in a given area. I loathe voice, except on rare occasion when I speak with my kid or a good friend of mine, halfway around the world, but that’s through signal, and it’s always great to voice/video chat with him and sometimes his friends or SO.

    • @LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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      11 month ago

      I used Signal for several years until some spotty areas near the beach it wasn’t working, so I worried it was unreliable and I abandoned Signal & went back to using whatever default SMS my cell provider has on my phone 🫤 Now y’all are reminding me to go back to Signal. Imma go do that now