Microblogging service Twitter used to allow users worldwide to update their status via free SMS from their mobile phones. In August of this year, 2008, the available 250 free SMS updates were withdrawn from European countries and Australia due to the greed of the mobile-phone companies causing Twitter to be unable to strike a reasonable-priced deal with them in order to subsidise these free SMS updates.

Three months later in November 2008 the same fate has befallen Canadian users, once again due to the greed of the service providers.

Writing for Venture Beat; M G Siegler expresses disgust at AT&T’s charging another $15 a month for conveying such a tiny amount of data.

Like Siegler; I don’t blame Twitter: it’s the greedy mobile operators that are slowly choking Twitter who should bear the brunt of any anger.

When India becomes Twitterless as far as mobile phones are concerned; will the US eventually follow suit and Twitter’s free SMS service be a thing of the past? Will this be a state-by-state shutdown or a nationwide outage? How will this affect the many Twittereers and Twitteresses in the USA who rely on SMS to tweet?