A typical budget plan offers perks in roughly these proportions (per month):
- 15 GB of mobile data
- 10 hours of calls
- 200 SMS
It may be 300, 500, but I’ve never seen more than 1000 SMS even on 100 GB plans.
An SMS is limited to 160 bytes. Hence one GB of network bandwidth is equivalent to 6250000 SMS. 500 SMS limit is not even a thousandth of a percent dent on the mobile data limit.
What comes to phone calls, a single SMS could fit in half a second of audio dial-up way.
Why not increase the limit?
It’s usually in the context of there not being a single app alternative (like WhatsApp or that one China uses) which took off before SMS became unlimited here, so SMS is the default if you want to exchange text messages with someone or if a company does.
Yeah, that makes some sense then!
I remember SMS still being a hot topic in the US from the (for me as an outsider) amusing blue(?) and green(?) text message bubble discussions.