T-Mobile: Fought with Twitter, Made Up with Twitter?

December 17, 2007 on 7:09 pm | In Mobile Web News |

I’ve already chronicled how some carrier networks have assumed the right to censor your surfing. T-Mobile recently joined this infamous bandwagon.

If you tried to Twitter on T-Mobile, you were met with the message: " …Twitter is not an authorized third-party service provider… ".

And if you got furious and wrote to T-Mobile threatening to cancel your contract, you might be have been swiftly pinned down by:

"T-Mobile would like to bring to your attention that the Terms and Conditions of service, to which you agreed at activation, indicate "… some Services are not available on third-party networks or while roaming. We may impose credit, usage, or other limits to Service, cancel or suspend Service, or block certain types of calls, messages, or sessions (such as international, 900, or 976 calls) at our discretion." Therefore, T-Mobile is not in violation of any agreement by not providing service to Twitter. T-Mobile regrets any inconvenience, however please note that if you remain under contract and choose to cancel service, you will be responsible for the $200 early termination fee that would be assessed to the account at cancellation."

These are verbatim quotes from the reply Robert Mertz got when he protested the censorship to T-Mobile.

Subsequently there was a public outcry (and therefore a PR disaster) for T-Mobile, spearheaded by the following sites (as chronicled by Rob Mertz):

• AlternaGeek’s post regarding this incident
• CNet’s Post
• Blog Post @ ZDNet (all about me, wow)
• Anohter Blog @ ZDNet
• Mashable’s Post
• TechCrunch’s Post
• Post at Digg
• Buzz Out Loud Forums
• Post at Center Networks
• Snippet at Truemors
• Post at TechBlorge (Australia)
• Post at Vanderwal
• Deep Jive Interests

Now it appears that T-Mobile has relented and resumed transmission of Tweets, but the picture is still murky. More soon…

Source: valleywag.com

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