[elashri]

Part of reason in for many places outside US. There are no unlimited messages plan.

edit: people seems to miss that I said that this is only part of the reason not the reason. I also said many places outside the US (not all). So do people down vote because they think that there are only US and EU in the world? I am missing that point.

[minimaul]

FWIW, most monthly contract plans in the UK have unlimited calls & SMS. The main differentiator is the size of the data cap. There are charges for MMS etc though.

Even the cheapest of plans from the main networks (3, vodafone, EE, o2) - as low as £4/mo have unlimited calls & SMS now.

edit: this has been the case for quite a few years now, too.

[candiodari]

RCS is the successor/replacement of MMS. Carriers will charge for it and that will be the end of the protocol.

It is explicitly designed to give carriers back control of messaging.

Why am I even saying this? We all remember how much fun carriers control over SMS was. It killed sms. There were never any new features. Cost made lots of stuff, such as multi party chats effectively impossible for teenagers ... It was always very unclear how much everything cost. There were "traps" with premium services, often not advertised as such. Now there's fraud with international SMSes. And things have gotten worse' several states made clear they use phones to find abortions ... And RCS is designed to bring this back. No.

Just. NO.

[angio]

That's not true, unlimited SMS have been a thing for at least 15 years in Europe, well before WhatsApp became popular. In my experience, people switched to WhatsApp because of group chats and images (MMS were expensive).

[The_Colonel]

Depends on the country. In Czechia, unlimited SMS plans used to be expensive.

That changed, but e.g. with my pre-paid plan I still pay 12 cents per SMS.

Historically there was also a problem that unlimited SMS plans worked only within a country. Now it's a bit better being EU-wide, but still not worry free.

[elashri]

So you don't think that there no other places outside except Europe?

[dailykoder]

Atleast in germany (almost?) every plan has unlimited messages nowadays. Even the cheapest prepaid plan. People still use WhatsApp, Signal, etc., because of media sharing and easy group conversations

[Semaphor]

> Even the cheapest prepaid plan.

My 3.99€/month plan includes 100 SMS. Not that I ever use all of those, all of my 100 minutes, or all of my 1 GB of data.

[preisschild]

Not in austria

[donkeyd]

This may have caused WhatsApp to get big in much of the EU, but by now many European countries also have unlimited text, so it's not the case any longer.

[lotsofpulp]

I thought high costs for international SMS and MMS is what caused WhatsApp to explode. I remember it being the first app with great UX for sending and receiving pics/video/contacts, and then they added group messaging which worked great as well.

No spam because you needed SMS text verification, no ads, no login to remember, just all around amazing app at the right place at the right time.

[maw]

Yep, all this.

The only thing I'll add is that, ca 2012 which is when whatsapp started really taking off where I live, intercarrier SMS was slow and unreliable. WhatsApp was fast and reliable.