I concur. Once you get used to mobile data plans in India, you'll realize how much American consumers are getting screwed by the likes of AT&T. AT&T behaves as if they are doing a favor to their consumers and that data is like gold, to be used with extreme respect and care.

BTW, only senders are charged for SMS in India, not receivers, unlike American carriers.

American Internet and communications service providers need some serious competition.

That was shocking to know that users are charged for receiving SMS in US!

By the way, In India most plans have some quota for free sms, which almost always go unused. Anyone who uses whatsapp doesn't even bother about sms.

> That was shocking to know that users are charged for receiving SMS in US!

In the US both senders and receivers are charged, generally. Each party pays their provider for the service of carrying messages from and to them across that provider's network.

Note that this makes each party responsible for the part of the complete message transport that they have some control over, and only that part.

So, for example, if you send me a message today, and another message tomorrow, you will pay the same amount both times even if today I'm at home and tomorrow I'm traveling to some remote area where message fees are much higher. I'm the one who pays the higher costs that are incurred due to my travel.

How would this be handled in a place where the sender pays for the whole thing? How do you find out how much it will cost you to send me a message?

In Brazil, SMSes are paid by the sender at local rates. If you are roaming internationally you might pay for receiving them, but it has been a long time since I saw charges for receiving SMSes. Probably the carrier recoups the interconnection fees when you send a SMS back.

For calls, though, the caller pays local rates, but you will pay your share of the roaming charges. Some carriers on pre-paid plans charge you a national long distance fee per call too.

in brazil, it's the same thing. i don't even remember the last time i sent an sms!

even companies are using whatsapp for notifications.

When a business is at the forefront of technological innovation and implementation for decades, the cost of infrastructure builds up, especially when labor cost goes up accordingly.

Now for a nation that is still building itself up, the labor cost is lower and you can simply take the know-hows and older hardwares from the innovators, which significantly cuts down on cost of implementation. Adding that to the economies of scale you can get at 1b+ in population and things can look obscenely cheap.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the businesses you get services from don't abuse of an oligopoly environments and other practices

If you think American consumers are getting screwed, just look at us in Canada.

You have free health care atleast.

> BTW, only senders are charged for SMS in India, not receivers, unlike American carriers.

What the heck, that's a thing in the US? How is that even legal

"being considerate of users in developing countries and being frugal with their data",

This is probably applicable to other developing countries, definitely not to India. Man, data is so cheap, 4G is widespread even in tier 2 cities. Am not sure about tier 3 towns and villages but so far, I am hard pressed to find large tracts of dead zones.

It's still an issue on the backhaul though which is still heavily contended in many of those markets.

That conclusion might be a bit strong. It might not have been expensive to you, but many in India probably do not have your income level? The median annual income level in India is under 2000 USD.