Twitter flies away from UK text support

If you’ve ever sat in the same office as someone who gets Twitter updates (or tweets as they’re known in the business) on their mobiles, you’ll be familiar with the constant beep of incoming alerts. You can now savour the sound of silence as the UK SMS service is no more.

Twitter has said that the high costs of mobile text messaging in the UK is forcing it to withdraw the service, which had proved popular with so many people. Indeed, the social networking tool boasts xxx users, many of which no doubt took advantage of the fact that the company bore much of the cost involved. Until now, that is.

“Let's start with the bad news. Beginning today, Twitter is no longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number. If you have been receiving SMS updates from Twitter via +44 762 480 1423, you'll notice that they've stopped and you may want to explore some of the alternatives we're suggesting,” the company stated as it broke the news in a blog post.

“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...”

New, local SMS numbers will be launched throughout Europe in the near future, according to Twitter.

It’s the UK that’s hit hardest by this issue of cost as Twitter has managed to establish good relations with mobile operators in Canada, India and the US. “We can provide full incoming and outgoing SMS service without passing along operator fees in these countries,” claims the post.

“It pains us to take this measure. However, we need to avoid placing undue burden on our company and our service. 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. It makes more sense for us to establish fair billing arrangements with mobile operators than it does to pass these high fees on to our users.”

Twitter is suggesting that UK users opt for alternative means in the absence of the free text service. These include: m.twitter.com, which is designed for browser-enabled phones; Cellity, which functions on java-enabled phones, TwitterBerry for BlackBerrys and Twitterific for iPhones.