The internet portal, Lycos UK says that it is to close its free SMS service due to rising costs. The company currently operates a service that allows users to send up to three messages per day from the portal to mobile phones free of charge. The messages are typically routed via overseas SMS centers, but the UK networks are starting to block these centers, often due to problems with Spam SMS.
Wessel Van Rensburg, product manager for mobile and email messaging at Lycos, said: "We would love to keep supplying the free service and have tried to keep it going for as long as possible. We have kept it going for so long because of our advertising revenue, but it is now just too expensive to pay for the SMS to be delivered to UK mobiles."
The company said that the price that it pays for SMS tripled in the last year, this means it is no longer viable for them to offer the usual free SMS service to our customers.
Lycos said it has two million registered customers for its free SMS product, which at its peak, was being used by over 900,000 unique users a month."
Posted to the site on 5th March 2004
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/10780.php