It makes much more sense outside the US than to pay for a text bundle. My phone plan includes 0 SMS messages, and I don't know what was the last time when I've had to send one was. It's only useful when someone doesn't have internet, which only happens once every few months at most.
You are generalizing quite a bit here, not everywhere "outside the US" is the same. Here almost all phone plans that aren't data only come with unlimited SMS - and we never paid for receiving them anyway.
It makes much more sense outside the US than to pay for a text bundle. My phone plan includes 0 SMS messages, and I don't know what was the last time when I've had to send one was. It's only useful when someone doesn't have internet, which only happens once every few months at most.