This development probably won’t lead to every Bharti Airtel customer becoming a Twitter addict, but it will eliminate big some obstacles.  First of all, the customers needn’t worry about having hardwired Internet connections – the partnership is all about texting.  Second, a lot of fees have been waived.

Biz Stone explained on the Twitter Blog, "Our partnership with Bharti Airtel, the largest mobile operator in India, means a huge population of people can now send tweets at standard rates and receive tweets for free.  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."

And that would be quite enough for one day; explosive growth may well occur as a result.  But it sounds like Stone has other agreements in the works, too, since he also wrote, "[T]here are more than four billion people with mobile phones and Twitter can work on all of them because even the simplest of these devices feature SMS. . . .  As long as you keep asking for Twitter, we’ll keep working to activate full service in your region with no extra charges."

Twitter fans all over the world would appear to have a lot to celebrate this afternoon.

According to a press release, the two companies will “work together in bringing important web-based services to Airtel’s community of broadband internet customers.”  Or, in other words, Google Search, Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets (among other things) will be bundled together and offered to almost 45 million people.  Not bad, right?

“We are delighted to work with Airtel to promote the use of Google services amongst its broadband users,” said Shailesh Rao, Managing Director of Google India.  Of course, Rao doesn’t think Google is the only one that’s benefiting from this arrangement.  “Today’s alliance will provide an ideal platform for Airtel users to enjoy the best possible online experience with customized access to Google’s evolving suite of innovative products,” he continued.

Speaking of “evolving products” – Google’s been showing a lot of interest in the mobile market lately, which might be most obvious in its WiMAX agreement with Sprint.  And all of this has revived rumors of the Google Phone.  The Airtel development isn’t likely to discourage any of that chatter because, as reported by the Business Standard, “The Airtel and Google alliance also plans to extend its services and suites to . . . mobile phones in times to come.”

Big happenings in a populous country.