Fido brings full Twitter text to Canadian customers
TORONTO, May 5 /CNW/ - Fido announced today that customers can now send
and receive updates from popular messaging service Twitter by SMS text message
over their mobile phones, via short code 21212. The feature comes at no
additional cost for customers on text messaging plans.
When the service goes live today, Fido customers who subscribe to a text
messaging plan will be able to update their Twitter status and receive updates
(known as "tweets") via text messages on their mobile phones. Twitter texts
are treated as standard messages under all text messaging plans.
"With more than one million Fido subscribers across Canada, it is
important that we continue to save money for our customers with value like
Twitter SMS text messaging on their mobile phones," said Sylvain Roy, Senior
Vice President and General Manager, Fido. "We will continue to support and
strengthen our relationship with Twitter in the future, to bring the latest
mobile services to our customers."
"We're thrilled to be working with Fido," said Kevin Thau, Twitter's
Director of Mobile Business Development. "Twitter is a real-time messaging
service for sharing and discovering what's happening - right now. By
partnering with Fido, customers using Twitter can now view, post and reply to
messages within their text messaging plans, ensuring the application stays
affordable and true to its real-time nature."
In addition to being able to send and receive tweets, customers will also
have access to all Twitter capabilities including the ability to add (or
"follow") new people and reply to updates. To limit the amount of received
messages, they will also be able to select whether they want to receive
updates from all the people they follow or from a select group of people.
Traffic to Twitter continues to accelerate with a yearly growth rate of
more than 1,300 percent.
Twitter will not be charged as a premium SMS service on Fido. Each
outgoing tweet will be counted as one message within a customer's text
messaging plan. Messages outside of a plan are 15 cents each. If customers do
not subscribe to a text messaging plan, out-of-plan text messaging charges
apply. These rates apply anywhere in Canada on the Fido Network.About Fido:
-----------Fido gives low prices a good home by offering Canadian consumers simple,
high-value low price wireless voice and data products and services with
excellent customer care. Operating on the global standard GSM and HSPA
technology platforms, Fido customers can roam in over 200 countries/areas.
For more information, please visit fido.ca.