Just download Signal. Cross platform, verifably E2E, and verifiably no data collected by Open Whisper (as per their submission in a lawsuit). Also, one of the authors/architects of Signal occasionally trolls the companies that provide mobile spyware.
How does Signal communicate with non signal users?
99% of the people I txt with would never use Signal...
I think this issue is mostly a USA one, considering that most communications there have caps (data, phone time, SMS etc.) Paradoxically, the market there doesn't work very well and prices are relatively high. Big corporations take advantage of it to lock people to their ecosystems. There is a high probability that this issue, will be regulated by the EU, since US policy makers are unable to solve much more important problems. For them this is not an issue. The market has solved it.
I'd argue the SMS/MMS reliance in the US is entirely because there have been no caps on it for years now. Nearly all plans you can get here have unlimited SMS/MMS included, even cheap prepaid ones.
Having a fixed allotment of texts or minutes hasn't been a thing for over a decade at this point, and the only thing that's expensive now is data.
I haven't sent an SMS since like 2013 or something like that. Couldn't care less about this blue green controversy, my use of SMS is receiving 2fa codes and spam.
Yeah, this is very much a weird USA issue.
I often only have internet access - no sms (receive only), no calls. Don't want to pay for it, don't need it.
RCS dates to 2008 and Appul didn't support it. Now we know that Appul is stuck in 2007 or earlier.
Edit: it seems RCS is another centralized hellscape
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