"Could Twitter have charged users as an alternative? Sure. And some would have paid it. But that would start a bad precedent. In order for Twitter to get the SMS deals it needs (and has in the US, Canada and India) to make its business viable, scalable and one day figure out how to make it profitable, it can not be beholden to carriers. Setting the precedent of just passing it onto the users would have put Twitter at a negotiating disadvantage with future deals. They needed to prove they'd walk away, even if it meant shutting down a country partially for a while. This was a smart business move."