Twitter Shows Global Ambitions With Moves in India and Japan

Cuts SMS Deal With Indian Telecom and Launches Mobile Service in Japanese With Banner Ads

10.15.09 @ 01:50 PM

India has roughly 457 million mobile subscribers, a massive population that, despite a fondness for SMS, hasn’t been able to receive Twitter updates via text. That all changed this week when Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile provider, inked a deal with the massively popular microblogging service that will allow subscribers to send Tweets at the usual text rates and receive them for free.

This just in: They still don’t have a business model but are valuated at a billion dollars.