Well, it was a matter of time with the few Canadian cell phone carriers having jacked up their rates for SMS text messages. Bell was the first one to do it, when they revealed that outbound text SMS messages would be $0.15 as of August 1st… and despite a huge consumer backlash and government involvement: nothing happened.
Now Twitter has officially announced they will no longer deliver SMS updates to Canadians (who use cell phone carriers in Canada such as Bell, Rogers, Fido and Telus) due to rocketing costs. They will still accept inbound Twitter status updates to their Canadian shortcode (21212)… but it sort of kills the functionality of Twitter for Canadians who were just getting used to the fast updates from their Twitter contacts.
I use Twitter Mobile in Canada on my HTC Touch with a mobile web browser to do status updates thanks to my Bell Mobility $7 unlimited data plan so if you have that you can set up a mechanism using a Twitter RSS to email feed system where you could get Twitter updates by email to your mobile device (presuming you have an unlimited - or generous - on-device data plan)…
Related posts:
- Mashup tool to publish photos from a camera directly to Twitter (and Google Maps)
- Bell Mobility recalls HTC Touch because it lacks French UI : Quebec Office de la langue française spotted the lack of French menus.
- Trainblogging : live from a ViaRail train between Ottawa & Montreal - roaming Satellite Internet connectivity on a train - sorta…
- Twitter virtually unreachable during final Obama / McCain debate - endless downtime
- Indian Government / military requests that Twitter “shut down” #mumbai page / updates on operations
