zlacker

Not sure that can be said as a blanket statement for the whole of Europe. In the UK SMS isn't common at all anymore.

>>esskay+(OP)
I suspect if you book a health appointment in the UK if your mobile number is listen increasingly you will get a SMS notification via Accurx[0].

I do still occasionally get work conversation initiated via SMS rather than WhatsApp especially if that comes from a phone which is associated with a task or job. Like the out of hours mobile phone which is moved between people.

[0] https://www.accurx.com/

>>esskay+(OP)
Same in Eastern Europe, where even mobile calls are giving way to WhatsApp, Viber, etc. This is also a common way to call many businesses

>>esskay+(OP)
Does anything let you configure 2fa via WhatsApp yet? I know there are logistics companies starting to offer it as an email alternative for notifications, but for most automated comms and for contact initiation, SMS is still the standard.

I think it would be more accurate to say that ongoing communication via SMS messages isn't common at all any more. They're like a protocol negotiation handshake.

>>esskay+(OP)
Not common isn't quite right. Ofcom's report shows that SMS use is shrinking, but it is still an average of 51 messages per user per month.

Source https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/222401/...

SMS decline is probably inevitable though.

>>edent+c2
Wow, 51 messages _sent_ per user per month, so it's not even about receiving verification SMS.

> The average mobile connection sent 51 messages per month in 2020, 17 fewer than in 2019.

I'd love to know the median, I assume there's a number of power users that drives up the average. Or bots that are sending out thousands of messages a day.

>>edent+c2
That seems really high based on my UK experience. The link says "the average mobile connection sent 51 messages per month". What does it mean for a "connection" to send messages? Could that include messages sent to the user? If so, this number would make sense (OTPs and spam).

>>luckyl+x4
"Wow"? That's two messages per day. Or just one single long conversation with somoenoe per month, like organizing a dinner and going back and forth around a subject a few times.

Wow, it's really dead.

>>edent+c2
"average person sends 51 sms a month" factoid is actually just statistical error...

>>edent+c2
51 messages per month in 2020.

>>claude+e5
Granted, I'm not in the UK, but Germany's market is somewhat similar regarding pricing etc. Not even my mother uses SMS, most people use either WhatsApp or Telegram, with some Threema and Signal mixed in.

Apparently Germany has ~8bn SMS for 160m contracts (don't ask me why there's an average of two contracts per person), which is like 50 a year. Edit: that number seems to include automated messages.

>>jhugo+O4
It's the only comment in a long and pointless Europe-does-this/no-it-doesn't that has found any statistics at all, so I think it's reasonable to accept it, unless much more detailed statistics can be found.

>>Symbio+wJ
I absolutely accept that the statistic is probably a true number of something, it's just unclear from the wording what the something is.

>>luckyl+rg
Apparently, after removing M2M-SIMs (smart-home, card-terminals, etc.) you end up with 107m active SIM cards.

That seems reasonable: Company-issued phones, LTE-Routers, some undercounting of M2M, and gerneral churn (I changed provider so I had 2 SIM-cards this year).