Twitter will be available on basic phones without Internet, from the first quarter of next year. The company is reportedly partnering with U2opia Mobile, the same company Facebook and Google Talk also uses to make the social network available on basic phones, according to its corporate website.
U2opia uses something called USSD for its Fonetwish product. USSD or unstructured supplementary service data is a protocol used by cellular telephones to communicate with the service provider’s computers.
USSD messages are up to 182 alphanumeric characters in length. Unlike Short Message Service (SMS) messages, USSD messages create a real-time connection during a USSD session. The connection remains open, allowing a two-way exchange of a sequence of data. This makes USSD more responsive than services that use SMS. You can read more on the USSD protocol here.
[Image courtesy: U2opia Mobile]