You can create throwaway SMS numbers for a few cents with several online providers, some even accept Bitcoin payments and dont ask for a name and Twitter accepts them happily. Its just the third party provider they use that did not implement that specific carrier yet.
Edit:// Also i am curious now why you think i had a thai phone number while living in switzerland? :D There are countries like austria that dont even ask for a passport for prepaid directly next to it, why would i go thai?
At least here it's not legal for a mobile operator to give you a phone number if they don't have your ID (not even a prepaid number) so I supposed it was the same in the whole EU. Therefore I imagined you heard somewhere there's an operator in Thailand that lets you get a number without giving an ID, maybe even for free, so you wanted to get one to auth in Twitter. But such a system would be abused by spammers so Twitter had blocked that operator already.
Yes, quite the elucubration, I know.