Why are SMS messages so expensive?

Allero@lemmy.today to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 174 points –

Is there any reason, beyond corporate greed, for SMS messages to cost so much?

If I get it right, an SMS message is just a short string of data, no different from a message we send in a messenger. If so, then what makes them so expensive? If we'd take Internet plans and consider how much data an SMS takes, we should pay tiny fraction of a cent for each message; why doesn't that happen?

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SMS are completely free? I mean yeah, they cost money back in 2009, but that was a loooooong time ago.

Wherever you are, you're being completely screwed, yeah.

They aren't free in Canada.

Yes they are? I guess maybe not up north but in every province they sure are

No they aren’t, you might have an unlimited plan but that’s different

Depends what you mean by free, but in BC any of the lowest cost plans ($15/month) have unlimited SMS included with the plan. The only time I paid per text was on a pre-paid SIM.

$15 bruv I'm paying €6 per month for 250MB of data, 100min calling and yes, already unlimited SMS

NL btw