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No Twitter SMS for You, Canada!
By Mark Evans | November 26, 2008
Twitter’s troubles with SMS - otherwise known as its a huge expense that it can’t really afford - have now seen it eliminate outbound SMS message for users in Canada.
The move comes a few months after Twitter was forced to shut down SMS service for U.K. customers.
It’s comes down to simple economics: it costs Twitter too much money, which is a challenge for a company that generates no revenue.
“We can’t afford to support this service given our current arrangement with our providers (where costs have been doubling for the past several months.) As a result, effective today we are no longer delivering outbound SMS over our Canadian shortcode (21212).”
For Canadians, it means they can send Tweets via SMS but can’t receive any Tweets using SMS. Of course, there are lots of cool tools out there to use Twitter on mobile devices without having to resort to SMS.
The sad part is Twitter’s move is yet another illustration how Canada is becoming a digital peasant. With carriers more intent on squeezing customers for revenue (aka ARPU) than providing innovative, new services, Canadians end up looking at the raging party going on without being able to participate.
Of course, it would also help if we had access to online services such as Hulu and Pandora but that doesn’t appear to be happening any time soon.
Twitter held out hope it can revive SMS outside the U.S. “There is a realistic, scalable SMS solution for Canada (and the rest of the world),” a post on Twitter’s blog read. “We’re working on that and will post more details on the Twitter blog as we make progress.”
For more, check out CNet.
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Topics: Wireless |