[franga2000]

Here in EU even the 5 €/month phone plans have unlimited SMS. As soon as you want to talk to someone without Whatsapp, you need to figure out which other apps they're on. Completely useless compared to SMS

Have you considered that the EU isn't one country?

[thedonncha]

In Ireland on my otherwise very generous mobile phone account I'm charged for multimedia SMS texts. They're not included in my SMS bundle.

[B1FIDO]

Multimedia "texts" are actually MMS. In fact, if you send more than 160 characters, those are also MMS because it's an extension of the SMS standard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_Messaging_Service

It is not unusual for there to be hosting or intermediate storage of images and other files, and from the phone you may tap a link or something to download/access that file, instead of having it automatically download and appear immediately, due to bandwidth and resource constraints.

[WesolyKubeczek]

Aren’t SMS that are over 160 characters being concatenated? There used to be a standard for that.

[AnssiH]

Generally yes.

I guess a phone/app could exist that does convert to MMS instead, though, since the app can make that decision.

[vladvasiliu]

In France, I'm "charged" for MMS, too. But that's actually considered "data", so it's deducted from the "internet" envelope which is quite generous (at least for my needs: I have multiple dozens of GB for under 10 € a month, of which I only ever went above 10 when backing up photos during a vacation with no wifi).

[hei-lima]

I'm not talking about the EU... That alone proves my point. SMS is/was more expensive worldwide.

[franga2000]

Yes, but there are also plenty of countries where mobile data or even smartphones aren't nearly as universal as they might be in the places where most people use whatsapp. There, people use mostly SMS and phone calls. Whatsapp and the like are the thing you use when SMS/calls would be too expensive, so international.

Both of these exist, as do middle grounds between them.

I'm in only one WhatsApp group with someone local, everyone else in my chats is from abroad. Yet I'm from a country with dirt cheap data and nearly universal smartphone ownership. People just don't use WA here for whatever reason. But drive an hour across the border and suddenly everyone is on WhatsApp.