>And yet this issue only seems to impact North America.
That's absolutely correct. Outside of US/CAN, everyone has long since moved on to various chat apps. Each country/region basically has a de-facto standard chat app that everyone uses. Here in Japan, you have to use LINE if you want to communicate with anyone outside of work/business. In China, it's WeChat, in many other countries it's WhatsApp, etc. Only Americans (and Canadians I guess) still use SMS for anything besides 2FA.
That's absolutely correct. Outside of US/CAN, everyone has long since moved on to various chat apps. Each country/region basically has a de-facto standard chat app that everyone uses. Here in Japan, you have to use LINE if you want to communicate with anyone outside of work/business. In China, it's WeChat, in many other countries it's WhatsApp, etc. Only Americans (and Canadians I guess) still use SMS for anything besides 2FA.