The Hindu : Business : Airtel ties up with BMA to provide services in Asia-Pacific

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 13, 2006

Business

Business

Airtel ties up with BMA to provide services in Asia-Pacific

Mobile conglomerate to build $40 m shared infrastructure

Focus on four services Regional services to all Airtel customers BMA consists of eight members

— Photo: Ramesh Sharma

RINGING IN ASIA PACIFIC: Sanjay Kapoor (second from right), Joint President (Mobility), Bharti Tele-Ventures India, flanked by senior representatives of the Bridge Mobile Alliance, at a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday.

NEW DELHI: Airtel on Wednesday announced a tie-up with the eight-member Bridge Mobile Alliance (BMA) to provide seamless cross-border mobile services to its customers across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

"Regional services of the alliance will be available to all Airtel customers when they are on roaming in the APAC region as well as to international roamers from member operators of the BMA,'' Airtel (Mobility) Joint President Sanjay Kapoor told reporters here.

The services include Bridge Roaming, Prepaid, Enterprise, and Bridge Concierge.

"We will be increasing the number of Bridge Prepaid top-up counters in India from three to 50 and are planning to extend the Bridge Concierge services in India to ten cities from the existing three,'' Mr. Kapoor said.

At present there are 33 Concierge counters that provide on-location assistance to customers should they lose their mobile phones, or need roaming or other technical help.

Asked about the purpose of the alliance, Bridge Mobile CEO Patrick Sim said, ``through this partnership we are able to extend our member operators' local content offerings to other members in the region more cost effectively.'' The BMA will invest up to $40 million in the next three years to build and establish a shared mobile infrastructure, and to deliver a wider range of regional mobile services.

The BMA is a current partnership of eight leading operators in the APAC region — Airtel (India), CSL (Hong Kong), Globe Telecom (Philippines), Maxis (Malaysia), SingTel Mobile (Singapore), SingTel Optus (Australia), Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan) and Telkomsel (Indonesia). "We are open to working with different country operators as and when we get the opportunity, but our focus will continue to be content and application services,'' Mr. Sim said, when asked if there were any plans of extending the current partnership. — UNI

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