In August 2008, it was announced that Twitter would stop sending SMS updates free outside the USA.
“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.”
Today, it is reported that Twitter are re-introducing this service on a second UK network after a deal was signed with Vodafone earlier this year.
From today, O2 customers will be able to both send and receive updates from Twitter with only standard text messaging rates applying.
If you’re an O2 customer looking to enable the feature, Twitter tells you how on their blog:
“To Twitter over SMS with your iPhone or any other mobile, head over to your account settings and activate your device. The Twitter shortcode in the UK is 86444 if you want to save it in your address book.”
With the number of subscribers using smart phones, how widely used are SMS updates these days anyway? I wonder…