Because whatsapp has for all intents and purposes 0 users in NA and everyone in the EU. It's simple pricing power.
Because Meta has decided that it would be fun to piss off EU antitrust regulators, I guess?
Antitrust in what market? Message-based conversation? Every company uses sms-based bots, whatsapp must be a tiny fraction of that
WhatsApp is a de facto standard method of communication in many countries ( e.g. in the Netherlands everything happens over WhatsApp). So if they abuse their position in typical Meta fashion, fines will rain and hopefully a breakup will happen.
Lets hope so, can't wait for the expensive fun
I think as one of the prime funnels of information and barometer of public opininon, this is what they calculated to be the optimum fee per seperate country. Surely there are plenty of parameters going into this price calculation, but I think the basis is the country GDP, competitors in the space, provided value, amount of SME's with dispensable income, and some others.
Surely they could make it even higher given the already widespread adoption of WhatsApp, but that might poke the bear and initiate anti-trust'ish. So, I think this is exactly the sweet spot to break everyone's balls, but just not enough.
The alternative is text messages, and US SMSes are cheaper than EU.
Not necessarily. In France SMSes are free for any plan costing more than 2€/month ( which you get as a backup or a kid), but still most people communicate via WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook Messenger. Even the disaster that is the last one has better UX than SMSes.
I only know one person on WhatsApp without a contract (which all have hundreds of free texts), and the Pay As You Go options I see in the UK go as low as a penny per text.
Most phone plans in the U.S. include unlimited SMS/MMS messages, including prepaid MVNO plans that are very affordable (with entry-level plans under $20/month). Pay-as-you-go plans are an exception, but they are becoming less cost-effective as monthly plans become more competitive.
I think the consumer mindset changes as soon as something is advertised as "unlimited", because you no longer have to think about conserving resources.