The Qtel Group brings Twitter mobile to customers across MENA

Qtel Group announced a strategic service partnership with Twitter as part of its efforts to make information more widely available to customers in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. The move will see Twitter reach more users, enabling increased communication between communities on a local, national and international scale.

Through the agreement signed today, the Qtel Group will provide Twitter SMS to mobile customers, so that they can tweet via SMS and receive updates from the people they follow - including their favourite actors, celebrities and contacts across the Twitterverse.

The Twitter service will also be integrated within the Group s social networking service TAP, where customers will have Twitter as part of their TAP offering alongside other social communities that they can access via their smartphones.

As part of the Qtel Group s strategy for growth in the Mobile Broadband space, the company is focusing on delivering the best possible mobile Internet experience for customers across its global footprint. This approach has included the launch of a number of new service innovations, including easy and convenient access to the most popular social and information services.

To obtain Twitter SMS, customers will only need to update their Twitter account with their mobile phone details, or create a new account if they do not already have one. The customer can then use an SMS short code to post Tweets and manage their account or have access to Twitter directly via TAP.

The Qtel Group-Twitter service will be available to pre-paid and post-paid customers, and on any type of handset capable of sending and receiving SMS. It will be available at standard SMS rates.

Globally, SMS is among the most popular methods to access Twitter, where there are now 110 million Tweets sent per day. The MENA region has lagged behind this key trend slightly in recent years, and the Qtel Group/Twitter partnership has been designed to help speed up adoption.

The first company in the Qtel Group to launch Twitter SMS was Indosat in Indonesia, which is growing quickly with regard to registered Twitter accounts.

Launches are also planned for Wataniya Maldives and Wataniya Palestine in the coming weeks.

Twitter is a communication platform that lets you stay connected to what s meaningful to you. Users can send, receive and read messages, called Tweets, within Twitter. The website has seen a phenomenal rise in popularity since its start up in 2006 with nearly 200 million registered accounts sending 110 million Tweets a day.