Proximus ironically announced the decision on Twitter. "Proximus — stop — ends the telegram — stop — after over 150 years of good, loyal service — stop," they tweeted in classic telegram style.
The telegram was invented in 1844 but it has been overtaken by new technologies — first the fax, then email and now social media. Britain closed its telegram service in 1982 but they were still sending them in the United States as late as 2006 and in India as recent as 2013.
But Colin Stone, the director of operations at Canada-based International Telegram, told Sputnik the telegram was alive and well with Italy, Argentina and Spain still operating their own state-run services and his own company sending up to 30,000 telegrams a year, mostly for business purposes.
"We operate throughout the world, even in remote villages where mail can take weeks to arrive — so telegrams remain a fast (same-day in some places) messaging option when the sender has only a street address," he told Sputnik.
Sputnik takes a look at some of the most famous, and in some cases infamous, telegrams over the years.
