Twitter announced today that it has partnered with Iridium and Thuraya, the two largest satellite operators, so that subscribers of these services have access to Twitter SMS.
“Now, even if phone lines and the Internet are inaccessible — for example, in a war zone or after a natural disaster — people will be able to share news and stay informed via Twitter,” the company says on its blog.
“We work with as many carriers as we can to support SMS around the world,” Twitter says. “If your carrier does not currently support Twitter SMS, you can still Tweet. Just use one of our long codes.”
Those can be found here.
As the company points out, Twitter did begin as an SMS service. Over the years, Twitter has become even more SMS-friendly, as evidenced by today’s update.
For example, in 2010, Twitter started letting users in the U.S. follow Twitter accounts via SMS without actually signing up for Twitter.