Pay-as-you-go is still popular in poorer markets, more rural areas or even in pro-competitive markets. It’s only particularly scummy markets that force customers to use their credit within a certain time period so for those who only rarely call/text and have consistent access to wifi, even 5-10 dollars worth of credit can last a year or more. Extremely consumer-friendly.
Comment on Why are SMS messages so expensive?
usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Wait, I haven’t paid for text messages in probably 15 years. Where do they still charge for SMS? It’s usually unlimited with any plan that I’ve seen
DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Klear@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, I’m within the reach of wifi almost constantly. Only need to call or send an SMS very rarely, so I’m quite happy to just have credit as backup. I get the feeling my provider would really love to get me on some monthly plan, but that ain’t happening if I can help it.
IronKrill@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I rode a prepaid plan like that for about 5 years, it’s honestly great. Everyone thought I was crazy when I said it cost me to text them lol but my cost was maybe ~$1/month. Now I’m on 50GB of data, but I travel almost constantly so it was finally worth it.
DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
For such limited usage, it’s absolutely not worth monthly. Unlimited for X amount is only good value if you’re making enough use out of it to outweigh the cost of PAYG. I used to travel for work and even at a bargain price of ~$10 for 20GB/unlimited/unlimited, I was only really using my data for Spotify while driving so come the end of the monthly cycle, I’d have an evening of watching YT or whatever else on my data since I’d still typically have about half left.
Klear@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Worst is it gets you into the mindset of “I have this much for the month so I might as well use it” and influence you to use it more. I don’t want that.
morrowind@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Really basic plans still charge you. When I was in school, my parents gave me a dumb phone with a plan that cost 10 cents per minute of calling or 10 cents per sms. MMS didn’t even work. Ridiculously expensive, but at the amount I was using still cheaper than anything else
asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
All plans include unlimited talk and text.
morrowind@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
That’s 5x what I paid.
Passerby6497@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The last phone I ever had that dinged me for SMS messages was the tracfone I owned when that was all I could afford. I think that might have been like a decade or so ago? Maybe closer to 15 like you were saying.
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Assuming you’re in UK or Ireland, most of the world still pays for SMS.
frezik@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Not in the US. Smartphones killed that shit.
But there was a time where people did the math, and SMS was more expensive than what it costs NASA to get data from the Hubble.
Maalus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Not in Poland either
Im_old@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Most of EU don’t pay for sms either
asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
tiredofsametab@kbin.run 3 weeks ago
I think my phone plan (in Japan) charges for outgoing SMS. I don't think it's much. I think some plans maybe include it. We all use LINE here (like much of Europe uses Whatsapp) so most people aren't sending text messages regularly if at all.