A typical budget plan offers perks in roughly these proportions (per month):
- 15 GB of mobile data
- 10 hours of calls
- 200 SMS
It may be 300, 500, but I’ve never seen more than 1000 SMS even on 100 GB plans.
An SMS is limited to 160 bytes. Hence one GB of network bandwidth is equivalent to 6250000 SMS. 500 SMS limit is not even a thousandth of a percent dent on the mobile data limit.
What comes to phone calls, a single SMS could fit in half a second of audio dial-up way.
Why not increase the limit?
SMS riding signalling side-channels is stuff from the old 2G days.
Current 4G and 5G connections just use normal IP protocol to handle it, no re-use of protocol bits any more.
So it’s not a scarce resource at all by now…
Also, MMS is increasingly a thing of the past, too. Most operators have already switched it off by now where I live.
And sms limits are from the old days. I have no idea where would have sms limits, unless it’s a third world/developing country.
Budget plans in canada have limits on sms and minutes too, last time I checked