[trebor]

Here's irony for you: basic text messaging is almost free to the carriers, because it actually happens on the cellular protocol's control channel. [1] Your phone maintains that connection persistently (I think), so fitting SMS messages into idle time makes it virtually free. The SMS cost is just a profit center for carriers, but this explanation also accounts for the speed of delivery, etc.

> Look at what happens to iOS users trying to switch to Android: iMessage blocks their communication for months afterward.

It used to, but Apple built a "deregister my number" page that'll be able to unlock that within a matter of minutes.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Message_Service#Initial_...

[habosa]

1 - yes that is a major issue with SMS and why SMS use is in such sharp decline. I doubt the carriers will make the mistake of pricing RCS like SMS or they'll never get to break into messaging again.

2 - the iMessage to Android experience is still broken in many other ways. For instance if you were in any long-running group messages that were iMessages, your messages will be silently dropped until the thread is re-created explicitly.

[ine3432n4e23n4]

2 - That sounds 100% expected. There is no such thing as a group message between iMessage and SMS/MMS. That is readily apparent the moment someone adds a non-iMessage identifier to a new group message. You're asking that the group iMessage experience degrade because you left. That sounds selfish to me.

[toast0]

> Here's irony for you: basic text messaging is almost free to the carriers, because it actually happens on the cellular protocol's control channel.

The airtime is basically free (although, if send/receive volume is high, this ends up with more of the control messages sent than would have been with an idle phone), but routing and storing the messages in transit isn't. Also, a lot of carriers have contracted out their SMS systems and are paying their contractors per message. Everybody charges everyone else for SMS between carriers as well.