SMS routing and billing systems did cost money. Especially billing, as the standards had nothing for it, so it was done by 3rd party software for a very long time.

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margalabargala 5 days ago | parent [-]

Of course, how pleasingly circular. "It's so expensive because it costs so much to charge you for it".

	▲	baq 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly! AWS is so expensive because it can be so cheap. Billing was the true innovation.