Lycos closes free SMS service
5 March 2004
Internet portal Lycos has announced plans to close down its free SMS service due to rising costs.
The current free online text messaging service allows users to send up to three SMS a day from a PC to a UK mobile phone at the Lycos Mobile Channel. The service will come to an end on March 18 2004 Lycos announced.
The company claimed that the free text messaging service, launched three years ago, had become too expensive to run because of increasing charges from UK mobile operators.
Lycos buys text messages in bulk from overseas SMS centres, but the site now claims that major UK network providers have started blocking SMS from international providers.
Wessel Van Rensburg, product manager for mobile and email messaging at Lycos, said: "We would love to keep supplying the free service and have tried to keep it going for as long as possible. We have kept it going for so long because of our advertising revenue, but it is now just too expensive to pay for the SMS to be delivered to UK mobiles."
Lycos has an estimated two has two million registered customers for its free SMS service, which attracted 900,000 users a month at its peak.
Subscribers to Lycos' new premium email service, which starts at £1.99 a month, will be able to get 30 free text messages every month.
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