[ale42]

I really hope that interoperability between (some of) these platforms, mandated by EU, will actually come true. Thing is, SMS is ancient technology, but it does work everywhere, on any kind of device, even on the dumbest one. All the other 3-rd party apps are (a) requiring an Internet connection to work, which most people have, but some don't, having limited data plans or prepaid accounts where data is way too expensive to use, and (b) they can only communicate with their own users, exactly like iMessage.

[threeseed]

> but some don't

The proportion of people with phone-only plans is very small and getting smaller by the year.

Let's just have an interoperability standard that is data based, encrypted and independent of carriers.

[klabb3]

> SMS is ancient technology, but it does work everywhere

Nowhere near true. As soon as you cross a geo boundary (ie travel) SMS is Russian roulette. It often doesn't go through at all. In the US, I've also seen carriers remove non-ascii characters.