OREANDA-NEWS. Telefonica S.A. (“Telefonica”) (NYSE: TEF) and open joint stock company MegaFon (“MegaFon”) (LSE: MFON), a leading Russian universal telecommunications operator, jointly announce that they have established a strategic partnership. Under this Agreement MegaFon will join Telefonica’s Partners Programme, which enables telecommunications operators to work together and to benefit from Telefonica’s scale and knowledge.

This new partnership between both companies will facilitate cost optimisation in equipment purchases via joint procurement and MegaFon and Telefonica will also exchange technological know-how. Under the Agreement Telefonica will provide services to multinational corporate clients using MegaFon’s network and similarly MegaFon business customers will have access to services when abroad.

In the future, MegaFon and Telefonica via their respective specialised subsidiaries, with their focus on rapid development, launch and monetisation of products in adjacent telecom businesses, may also promote the development of various new businesses (such as OTT, cloud services or M2M), creating new growth opportunities for both companies.

The Agreement between MegaFon and Telefonica will expand Telefonica’s Partners Programme and will increase the number of its participants, which already include equity partners such as China Unicom and Telecom Italia, as well as other members. Currently Telefonica and its Partners provide services to customers in 52 countries with a population of 1.5 billion people.

Ivan Tavrin, Chief Executive Officer of MegaFon, commented:

“Joining Telefonica’s Partners Programme is in line with MegaFon’s long term strategy focused on efficient growth, mobile Internet service development and enhancement of the customer experience. This Agreement enables us to work with the best international professionals to use their experience in improving quality of services, customer relationship management and in new product development”.

Eduardo Navarro, Telefonica Group’s Chief Strategy and Alliances Officer, stated:

“We are committed to jointly work to take advantage of our outstanding strategic alignment and to make available the benefits of Telefonica’s scale and breadth of business through the Telefonica Partners Program, as well as to tackle together the challenges the industry transition is posing to operators worldwide”.