I hate to burst an american bubble but SMSs have been widely used all over the european continent (and oh yeah, in the UK too) for ages... Stuff like World Cup results, breaking news, horoscopes, chat boxes and even SPAM have been polluting european cell phones for years. There are several free and paying gateways and I think there are a few SMS modules on CPAN too :) why not (ab)use those since not all phone companies provide the mail2SMS service.
Perl is like sex: if you're doing it wrong, there's no fun to it.