VentureBeat

With a service that was designed to work with older SMS technology, Twitter’s microblogging network is an ideal match for developing markets like India.

So it makes sense that the company, which is just fresh off launching a translation program, is hungry to break into countries where the only web connection a user may ever know is through their phone.

Twitter just closed a deal with India’s largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, to let people send tweets at standard rates and receive them for free. Bharti says it connects more than 110 million people.

“Bharti Airtel is offering people in every city, every village, every remote taluk and even the smallest panchayat the opportunity to connect to Twitter and enjoy the open exchange of information with no added fees,” wrote Twitter co-founder Biz Stone in a blog post.

There are a lot of fascinating projects that already harness SMS technology to create real value in the developing world from services that update local producers on commodity prices to ones that help deliver health care. And if Twitter can execute a successful strategy in places that are more reliant on cellphones, it could become the backbone for a number of e-commerce opportunities or a mobile payments network. They’ve already made the sign-up process super simple — it doesn’t require Internet access, just a text message to the company’s shortcode at ‘53000′ on an Airtel phone.

Stone certainly has lofty ambitions for the project: “There are over one billion people with internet access on the planet but there are more than four billion people with mobile phones and Twitter can work on all of them …”

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