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?

  • scoobford@lemmy.zip
    0·
    7 months ago

    SMS piggybacks on existing signals to and from your phone. They are entirely free, and have been in a lot of places for a long time.

    You’re getting screwed. At least it’s a good reason for your contacts to switch to signal or simpleX?

    • kevincox@lemmy.ml
      0·
      7 months ago

      This isn’t really true anymore. Originally it was and because SMS was rarely used it was effectively free. But then it grew more popular to the point where most messages didn’t have “unused bandwidth” to piggyback on and had to be sent separately. Now days all traffic is basically data traffic and SMS isn’t hiding in some unused space.

      That being said it is still so close to free that it doesn’t really matter. Sending 140 bytes of low-priority data is a rounding error.