[bombcar]

More importantly, most Americas do not text anyone outside of the country, and haven't really ever.

So people had no real reason to move off of texting, because it just worked, and Apple's iMessage just looks like texting seamlessly.

[Arrath]

As an American with European and Australian friends, they're the ones who got me into using WhatsApp.

[ghaff]

Yeah, as an American who actually knows a fair number of people overseas, there are probably a literal handful of people who I communicate with on a regular basis there and I use a variety of channels but SMS/iMessage works fine one a day-to-day basis for most folks.

[hpeter]

As an European who lived in multiple countries, I haven't used SMS in 10 years for anything other than 2FA.

[ghaff]

The US probably moved to SMS being basically free (domestically) before Europe did. As a result it seems that the US standardized on SMS (and basically transparently iMessage) because that's what was just there. I never get a Whatsapp message from someone in the US and rarely anything other than SMS/iMessage. I suspect the vast majority of people I know don't have Whatsapp installed. I use it with people I know internationally.

[bombcar]

It’s like Internet Explorer was for downloading Chrome; SMS is for authentication to get your WhatsApp running.

[happyopossum]

> More importantly, most Americas do not text anyone outside of the country, and haven't really ever

As a dual-citizen of Canada and the US, I'd have to say that's massively overgeneralized. Pretty much every Canadian I know regularly texts with Americans (iMessage or not), which means those Americans are texting with people outside of the Country.

[ninjakttty]

You're not refuting his statement. There are massively way more Americans than Canadians.

[bombcar]

And Canada is basically America for the purposes of phone numbers and texting.

What’s Canada’s country code?

[shiroiushi]

No, they're not.

The USA and Canada are really the same country, as far as the telcos are concerned. They're part of the same North American phone system, and have the same +1 prefix. Calls between the countries are all free, and don't carry international charges. You might think they're separate countries, and the governments may agree, but the telecom companies disagree.

[rchaud]

> Calls between the countries are all free, and don't carry international charges.

That depends on your phone plan. The telco charges extra if you don't have a US calling plan add-on. US roaming also costs $12/day.