If your Airtel cellphone's message tone beeped, it could be a tweet.

A few minutes ago my cellphone beeped once, alerting me that I had a message. Who could it be, after 12 at night? I didn't expect it to be a tweet from one of the persons I was following on Twitter.

For the past few months, I had not been able to use Twitter's India number () to send tweets, so getting a tweet on my phone was even more surprising. For the last few occasions, I had used Twitter's international number to send tweets through cellphone text messages. I immediately checked my Twitter updates, and there was a tweet sent by @twitter at around midnight (local time), congratulating  @twittermobile for partnering with the largest mobile operator in India.

Indian users with an Airtel mobile connection can receive tweets as text messages on their cellphones. It's no longer required for you to have an Internet-enabled phone for always staying updated with your Twitter account. In case you haven't activated your cellphone on Twitter, go to devices page or text START to 53000 from your Airtel mobile.Also, send your tweets to the same number.

For non-Airtel mobile networks, the service will be available after the exclusivity period of four weeks. So if you are not an Airtel subscriber, you can expect to get tweets as text messages from 5 November.

According to Airtel's website:

There is exclusivity for the same for 4 weeks, in which only Airtel consumers will be able to use the service on SMS across the nation. This period of exclusivity is something that we want to take advantage of and make sure that Brand Airtel can own the property Twitter in consumer mind space.

I am really excited that Twitter will be again available on text messages in India. But on the flip side, my phone has been beeping every few minutes for the last one hour. I believe the service started from 00.00 hours of 15 October. I need to turn off updates from midnight to 10am so that I can have a peaceful sleep.

PS: Twitter is not only restricting tweet SMSes only to Airtel users but also sending updates only of the users who have an Airtel mobile. In case you want to receive updates of a friend who is not using an Airtel phone, you will have to manually turn on mobile notifications on the settings page.