New Delhi, Dec 2 (IANS): Bharti Airtel Monday said its Africa unit will join a bridge alliance, a mobile collaboration made up of 14 operators serving over 500 million customers, that will help improve its services, especially on roaming.

Andre Beyers, chief marketing officer at Airtel Africa said the new initiative would help the company improve mobile business operations at an international level.

“It is important to be part of a strong alliance which can enable our enterprise customers to achieve full visibility of their regional mobile expenses for better check and control of corporate mobile spend,” Beyers said in a statement.

“Additionally, being part of Bridge Alliance enable the customers of Airtel Africa OpCos to enjoy forward-thinking roaming services extended to new countries in Asia and beyond,” he said.

Commenting on the deal, chief executive officer of Bridge Alliance Alessandro Adriani said it will help Airtel as well as other members of the the alliance to expand their reach in African markets.

“Airtel Africa OpCos and of all Bridge Alliance members will enjoy geographically extended, simplified and competitive data roaming and voice services. Additionally, enterprise customers will achieve full control of their global mobile expenses and seamless mobile communications solutions,” Adriani said.

Other members of Bridge Alliance include AIS (Thailand), CSL (Hong Kong), CTM (Macau), Globe Telecom (Philippines), Maxis (Malaysia), MobiFone (Vietnam), SingTel Mobile (Singapore), Optus Mobile (Australia), SK Telecom (South Korea), Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan), Telkomcel (Timor-Leste) and Telkomsel (Indonesia).

Bridge Alliance members leverage their long lasting partnership to develop and launch innovative enterprise and roaming solutions.