Can we kill SMS already? Seriously, what's wrong with e-mail? Everyone has data plans nowadays, if not data-only plans, and e-mail is cross-platform. Stop making me have to carry my phone around. I already have my SMS forwarding to my e-mail automatically, and now I'm just waiting for SMS to die.
I'm not sure about the US but in Canada it's certainly not true that everyone has data plans (in fact as far as I can tell unless you have a company sponsored phone, data plans are in the minority), and SMS remains a cheap communication method that is more or less guaranteed to work.
I live in Canada, and I don't know anyone who lives here that doesn't have a data plan of some kind, although I'm sure they definitely do exist and there are definitely people without a ton of data.
Really? I don't know many university students that don't have the latest smartphone(or at least a fairly recent one) which usually implies they have a data plan of some kind since most of them don't have $800+ to pay outright.
But to be fair at my university there are also a lot of students that drive brand new or fairly new cars too and I've parked beside too many Porsches the student parking lot.
It's a good idea to have two separate channels. SMS will also work when you're in another country without a data plan. Every phone has SMS. The OTT instant messaging solutions are fragmented (I wish all my contacts had Signal!)
And e-mail will work when you don't even have a cell phone. I don't like the idea that I need to carry a phone around everywhere I go. If I happen to be carrying a laptop around with me, I want that laptop, as a more powerful device, to replace my phone, not require me to walk around with 2 devices which is cumbersome, theft-prone, and simply downright inconvenient to have your eyes glancing between 2 screens all the time. Everything else -- Facebook, Gmail, Skype, everything else -- can be accessed with that laptop. Information flows with me, independent of device. I show up in front of any screen that I own, authenticate myself with a password, and everything I need shows up on that screen, loaded from the cloud. I move between rooms, between offices, carrying nothing, and continue replying to my Facebook chats and e-mails that I started in the previous location. I don't need to carry anything with me. SMS, WhatsApp, and WeChat don't flow like that, which is why I hate them with a passion.
Plus, data plans are available everywhere now. For the most part, I use only data. Also, SMS doesn't work when you have to keep switching SIM cards and phone numbers. I can't login to half of my accounts that want to do SMS verification because I registered those accounts using a different SIM card in a different country; I have to wait till I return to those countries before I can login to those accounts and do something about them.
E-mail doesn't have this issue. I've had one e-mail address that has been associated with me for 15+ years that has worked 24/7 internationally. Phone numbers have to practically change every time you step across a country border. Phone numbers are a horrible way to identify me, at least.
