SMS has been free in the UK for a long time but nobody uses it, I think WhatsApp killed it around 2010ish. I think the main drivers for people switching to WhatsApp from SMS were:
Works with WiFi when you have no network signal. A lot of times, especially back then, phone signal would be almost non existent inside larger buildings, especially older buildings where the walls are like 1metre thick.
Way way faster and more responsive, you can see when it’s sent, received and read
Can send pictures and messages! You could do it via MMS but that was (and is today) expensive (it’s like £0.50 per message according to my contract). Plus MMS was slow, sometimes messages wouldn’t send, or they’d get sent to an email inbox provided by the phone network, and/or they’d arrive days later.
Group chats
It’s also interesting that the top comment here mentions wanting SMS fallback. For me it would bug the hell out of me if it did fallback, I’d rather the message just not send.
SMS has been free in the UK for a long time but nobody uses it, I think WhatsApp killed it around 2010ish. I think the main drivers for people switching to WhatsApp from SMS were:
It’s also interesting that the top comment here mentions wanting SMS fallback. For me it would bug the hell out of me if it did fallback, I’d rather the message just not send.