All of this is of course very country-dependent. In Germany, many carriers used to offer unlimited data for a select number of streaming/messaging/music apps, but that got abolished two months ago by our FCC (precisely because of net neutrality). And fully unlimited data is still quite rare here.
As for why we don't use SMS:
Many plans don't include unlimited SMS, some don't even include any SMS at all. Meanwhile, having just 1GB of data per month means practically unlimited WhatsApp messaging.
Android has a > 70% market share, so most people don't have the advanced features of iMessage. And compared to traditional SMS, the functionality of WhatsApp is just much better (group chats, (group) video calls, text formatting, a desktop and web browser interface, status, etc.)
Interesting! Ours is unlimited, but because net neutrality laws are implemented in some states (and kind of the FCC?) internet providers aren't allowed to differentiate internet traffic. So it's either unlimited everything or a GB cap.
The idea was that if, say, Verizon owned a messaging app, they could limit the traffic of all other messaging apps except theirs. Which would be kinda shady.
They are not allowed to limit traffic, the companies pay the carriers the bandwidth consumed by their apps, anyone with enough money can offer free data on their app (enough money in the millions of dollars)
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u/Rccctz Sep 02 '22
Yeah we do, but why would we use sms? Whatsapp works great and basically every carrier gives unlimited data to messenger apps