From today, Twitter will no longer deliver outbound SMS messages over their UK number. While you can still post updates using the default UK number via SMS, your followers will no longer receive your tweets on their cellphones.
According to an e-mail I’ve just received from Twitter, the cost of relaying your tweets to followers has grown too much to bear:
Mobile operators in most of the world charge users to send updates. When you send one message to Twitter and we send it to ten followers, you aren’t charged ten times–that’s because we’ve been footing the bill. When we launched our free SMS service to the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in popularity, so too would the price.
Our challenge during this window of time was to establish relationships with mobile operators around the world such that our SMS services could become sustainable from a cost perspective. We achieved this goal in Canada, India, and the United States. We can provide full incoming and outgoing SMS service without passing along operator fees in these countries.
We took a risk hoping to bring more nations onboard and more mobile operators around to our way of thinking but we’ve arrived at a point where the responsible thing to do is slow our costs and take a different approach.
Twitter says the decision is aimed at lifting the undue burden on the company. For users outside the US, Canada and India, it could cost Twitter about US$1,000 per user, per year to relay SMS messages, even with a limit of 250 messages received per week.
The company adds that it will continue to negotiate with mobile operators in Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas to forge relationships that benefit users. “Our goal is to provide full, two-way service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is sustainable from a cost perspective”.
Meanwhile, Twitter is introducing local numbers in countries throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months. Twitter says this “these new numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you’ve been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.”
