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A comment on Google has started the global roll-out of its new Chat messaging service. Parent comment

Re:Google has started the global roll-out of its new Chat me... by veidr on Monday April 23, 2018 @08:23AM (#16902720)
SMS is still very widely used by parties who don't know each other. In theory, anybody with a phone number can receive an SMS (though not always in reality, because SMS is a bag of suck). So your pharmacy can SMS you when your prescription is ready, your mechanic can SMS you when your car is fixed, etc.

I don't personally know anybody who still uses SMS to communicate directly with friends or frequent real-world contacts. But I also don't know anybody who still watches real-time broadcast TV with ads. I assume there are still a lot of both out there in the world, however.

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Re:Google has started the global roll-out of its new Chat me... by dragonwriter on Monday April 23, 2018 @08:58AM (#16902976)
> In theory, anybody with a phone number can receive an SMS

Basic landlines are still a thing, and cannot, even in theory, recieve SMS.

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Re:Google has started the global roll-out of its new Chat me... by jfk13 on Monday April 23, 2018 @09:44AM (#16903308)
When someone sends an SMS to my landline, the phone rings and there's some kind of automated service that reads it out to me. It's even pretty intelligible, usually.

This isn't something I ever signed up for explicitly. But maybe it's just my provider?

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Re:Google has started the global roll-out of its new Chat me... by jerry_tk on Monday April 23, 2018 @10:46AM (#16903818)
Actually, depending on your phone carrier, it might be possible to send SMS even to landline: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/05/bt_land_text/
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Re:Google has started the global roll-out of its new Chat me... by mrighele on Monday April 23, 2018 @09:41AM (#16903285)
A remember seeing a national landline operator accepting SMS sent to its numbers, and reading them to the user after converting them to speech. The result was not exactly exciting, but the idea wasn't half bad.
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Re:Google has started the global roll-out of its new Chat me... by John_KZ on Monday April 23, 2018 @05:03PM (#16907365)
Aren't landline and mobile number formats clearly distinct in the US? Afaik in the entirety of Europe mobile numbers have a different prefix than landlines.
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Re:Google has started the global roll-out of its new Chat me... by veidr on Wednesday April 25, 2018 @11:50AM (#16922687)
> Basic landlines are still a thing

Oh yeah, LOL, I quite honestly forgot about the existence of those haha

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