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Comment on Why do phones come with SMS delivery reports turned off by default?

Text messages cost $0.10 each where I live. And it used to cost up to $0.35 each 20 years ago.

The delivery report would count as a message, thus, doubling your bill.

It was used exclusively to deliver news like death or wedding invitations. For other matters which usually need going back and forth, it was cheaper to just make a call.

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originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
the markup on text messaging has always been northern of 99.999%. it costs them almost nothing.

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- KISSmyOS@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Originally they were planned to be free. Until the providers realized how popular they are.
  
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- ramble81@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Even crazier is they take up almost no bandwidth because they were sent in the unused part of the control packet which was being sent anyway.
  
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- FelipeFelop@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  This is true. When I checked on this about five years ago (in the UK), the cost per message was about £0.00001
  
  With the reduction in the number of SMS sent, it now costs more to bill them. In the UK, even the cheapest monthly contract has unlimited calls and texts. There a pre-pay tariffs as low as £3 a month with calls, texts and some data.
  
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- lemmyman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Sure, the marginal cost is basically nothing. Once you have invested billions in infrastructure.
  
  Not saying 10 cents isn’t outrageous, just that 0.001 cents seems low
  
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Christos@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Damn wtf. People still pay per text? Wack

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- skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I get 300 SMS messages/minutes per month. I could go unlimited, but that costs a few euros per month extra (2 or 3, haven’t changed in a while).
  
  Since nobody but SMS 2FA services send me SMS messages anyway, I’m not going to pay extra for SMS. I’m already paying €16.50 per month for 20GB of data, I’m not paying more. If people want to reach me, I have five messengers installed on my phone, four of which are end to end encrypted in some way or another, that all use my data plan (that I never use up). I haven’t met anyone who wasn’t either on WhatsApp or Signal already anyway.
  
  SMS in inferior in every way, I don’t get why anyone still uses it even if it’d be free. I suppose it’s a good solution for people with very little data and unlimited text?
  
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  - Christos@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Damn that math checks out!! 16.50 for 20gb of data is wayy more worth it than unlimited text
    
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