On Thu, 14 Feb 2019 18:58:11 GMT, David Higton wrote:
> Texting (i.e. SMS): yes; but do people often send MMS in the USA, and
> are MMS messages normally inclusive or are they normally chargeable?
Things changed over time, where, in the "olden" days, in the USA,
o We paid roaming charges in the past
o We paid differently for calls to mobile phones than to landlines
o We paid for calling outside the "network" (friends & family stuff)
o We paid for texts after a minimum amount (like 200 texts/month)
o We paid for tethering and/or hotspotting (they're different things)
o As I recall, we also paid for WiFi calls in the past (which is a crime)
etc.
I'm sure crappy plans like that _still_ exist, but your question assumes an
"intelligent" consumer, who gets a "decent" USA plan for a decent price.
I consider myself of average intelligence (if that), so I will simply
explain "my" plan, on T-Mobile, although I've had Verizon and AT&T in the
past, where the service is "about the same" for such things.
Here's what "my" plan is:
o I pay roughly about $25 per phone per month
o I get unlimited phone calls to and from USA mobile & landlines
o I get 2.5GB/month "free" data (which is currently a 4GB promotion)
o I get unlimited SMS & MMS to and from _any_ phone in the world (AFAIK)
o I get free tethering & hotspotting
o And I have a few free SIM cards for life for free 200MB/month tablet data
Note the "data" never turns off; it just slows down, and they never charge
you for excess data (it's just very slow I'm told, when you go over your
limit).
Of courses, you can _always_ buy more data, in 1-month chunks, for about 10
bucks, if you need it, where I only needed to do that once (see Europe
below).
I also get a free "femtocell" in my house, and a free cellular repeater,
where T-Mobile offers, for free, one of these three (they gave me two):
1. A free femtocell
2. A free cellular repeater
3. A free WiFi router
NOTE: T-Mobile essentially seems to give you double what they "say" they
give you for "free data", where I supposed the plan is to get you drunk on
the data. Me? I use about 200KB per month, but others in my "family" use
the limit where you can then just pay something like $10 once to get
another 5GB (or whatever it is) for that month.
Notice I get unlimited free SMS & MMS to and from any phone in the world,
where I've used that a lot since I travel to Europe once or twice every
year, and my family does too, where in Europe, T-Mobile changes the plan
such that the data goes unlimited, all the while there are still no roaming
charges.
So, in Europe, the only differences I can remember are:
o The free SIM card for the tablets no longer works in Europe
o Calls suddenly go from "free" to 20 cents a minute while in Europe
o Calls are still free if you make them while on WiFi in Europe
o There is no roaming charges where DATA goes UNLIMITED in Europe!
Note this bonus: *Data goes to unlimited amounts when in Europe!*
The one "catch" is that the day before you go to Europe, you have to have
at least a byte of data left, where once, one of my family members had used
up ALL her USA data, so we had to buy a $10 chunk of "USA data" in order
for her to have "unlimited data" in Europe. But that's just a technicality.
Another technicality, as I recall, is that one of the free hotspotting or
tethering options doesn't work in Europe. I forget which as I use neither,
but, again, that's just a technicality, as is the fact the free SIM card
for life doesn't work in Europe.
That's my plan - but others may have different plans, so I'll let them
describe their plans to you - but I think my plan is pretty typical in the
USA.
The point is that EVERYONE I've ever met in my entire life, uses the free
SMS/MMS texting app that comes with EVERY USA Android phone, and which has,
essentially, free MMS/SMS texting, so, there's no big reason for us to go
to proprietary non-carrier solutions.
I realize there is a huge 200+ post thread where some people _insist_
everyone in the USA dropped MMS/SMS but if they did, they never told that
to EVERYONE I've ever met in my life here in Silicon Valley and elsewhere
around the USA.
Notice also that nospam was trying to bullshit us with his "links", which,
if he even _looked_ at them once, he'd know they prove nothing of what he
"claims".
In general, the way to understand nospam is to simply assume he works for
Apple Marketing where he's always following a script that forces
"proprietary" solutions where non-proprietary solutions work just fine.
> In Europe, it's a fact that service providers charge for MMS (often,
> quite heavily) in most cases, and also normally give customers an
> inclusive data allowance. Put those facts together with the better
> facilities offered by the proprietary apps (WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.)
> and the latter are the obvious choice for users. MMS is rarely used
> over here.
As I said, I travel to Europe frequently, where I've been there, oh, I
don't know, fifty times in my life or so, both before and after cell
phones.
I'm quite well aware that, essentially, they use WhatsApp.
In fact, I once asked T-Mobile if I could ADD a European relative to my
family plan so that they could get _my_ prices, but they wouldn't let me
(which makes sense).
Hope this helps.
Everything I stated above is fact.
If nospam wants to outright claim my facts are wrong, I'll simply ask him
what his proof is to deny basic facts out of hand with zero evidence.