[ljf]

I believe (historically at least), local calls in america were free - setting up a robocaller could take advantage of this - the only cost was energy. In the UK/EU the same calls would cost the robocaller money.

Similarly, I understand it is free to send SMS in the states, you pay to receive them. Again this is a cost in the UK - though with a headless mobile phone and a SIM with 'unlimited sms' this can be worked around, though the SIM need to be rotated.

[bluGill]

SMS has been free for most people in the US for a long time now. For a while Europe was cheaper, but things have changed over the last 20 years, and they will continue to change. When SMS was cheaper in the EU, voice calls were vastly cheaper in the US, so when the EU would use SMS, the US would just make a voice call (at the time the US spent 2x as much for phone service, but used the phone 5x as much - I'm going to call that cheaper but you can read the numbers several ways).

Robo calls make sense in the US in part because we used the phone more (remember historic), and in part because "everyone" spoke English and so you could ignore language and reach a lot more people.

[rootusrootus]

> I understand it is free to send SMS in the states, you pay to receive them.

That has not been true in many years. Most people have unlimited everything. Cost conscious consumers do opt for plans with limits, but that's on data, not calls and/or SMS.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> in the states, you pay to receive SMS.

> Again this is a cost in the UK - though with a headless mobile phone and a SIM with 'unlimited sms' this can be worked around, though the SIM need to be rotated.

The 2 scenarios seem to be:

1) SMS is included in the service. This makes sense. Original SMS were 0-cost to provide; they rode on existing control traffic.

2) Honest people pay per SMS. Spammers don't. As ever, this disproportionately effects honest poor people.