Twitter Suspends Most International SMS Messages

The micro-blogging company, Twitter has been forced to suspend SMS alerts to most countries, citing high costs for delivering the SMS messages to handsets. The company says that it will maintain the SMS service for users in the USA, Canada - and India, but the UK which reportedly accounts for a large percentage of its user base have been frozen out.

In a statement, the company said that when you send one message to Twitter and they send it to ten followers, the users haven't been charged ten times - and Twitter picked up the costs.

As twitter notes, when they launched the free SMS service to the world, they set the clock ticking. As the service grew in popularity, so too would the price.

Twitter will however be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries throughout Europe, in the coming weeks and months. These new numbers will make Twittering more accessible for all the folks who have been using SMS to send long-distance updates through the UK number.

Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US.

The company took a risk hoping to bring more nations onboard and more mobile operators around to their way of thinking but they've arrived at a point where they have slow down the rate the firm is buring through its investor cash.

As of July 2008, the company had over 2.2 million registered accounts.

Posted to the site on 14th August 2008