A system and method is disclosed for providing throttle control in the context of a short message point-to-point gateway. The method enables the control of a message sent from a message source, such as an external source message entity (ESME) to a message-receiving device such as a mobile phone. The method comprises transmitting a data unit associated with the message from the message source to the gateway, determining whether the message source has exceeded a threshold value associated with sending messages and transmitting a response signal from the gateway to the message source indicating an error if the message source has exceeded the threshold value. In this manner, throttle control occurs on an ESME-by-ESME basis, rather than in the aggregate.