Bharti Airtel, India's leading telecommunications service provider, today announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), the leading provider of Internet infrastructure for the networked world. The companies agreed to form a strategic market partnership to jointly launch best-in-class security services, to deliver VeriSign's identity protection, managed security and fraud detection services, and to support the development of the next-generation Internet infrastructure in the Indian market.
Under this arrangement, Bharti Airtel will become VeriSign's Strategic Market Partner and will deploy VeriSign's world class services in India, leveraging Bharti Airtel's strong in-country support and expertise. These services aim to revolutionize the way enterprises, small and medium-sized businesses, and consumers harness the power of the Internet and develop new applications that leverage the convergence of mobile and internet platforms.
Additionally, as a part of the partnership, Bharti Airtel will utilize a number of VeriSign's capabilities, including VeriSign Identity Protection (VIP) services to significantly improve the internal capabilities of its own infrastructure and to better serve its growing customer base.
Dr. Jai Menon, Director - IT & Innovation and Group Chief Information Officer of Bharti Airtel Limited, said, "The partnership with VeriSign demonstrates our intent to create a globally admired telecommunications company. Our combined strength will provide the Indian market with the latest Internet and IP infrastructure services, strongly supported by our local resources. We look forward to seeing the benefits of these services internally and for our customers."
"VeriSign expects significant growth in the Indian market over the next several years. Our strategy was to find a partner that shared our vision for next-generation network services and had the capability to execute, and Bharti Airtel was our clear choice," says Chris Parsons, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy at VeriSign. "Bharti's commitment to enabling India to become a global leader in technology is clearly demonstrated by their actions."
The companies also announced that the new partnership expects to deliver its first set of services to market in 2008.
About VeriSign
VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) operates digital infrastructure services that enable and protect billions of interactions every day across the world's voice, video and data networks. Additional news and information about the company is available at www.verisign.com.
About Bharti Airtel Limited
Bharti Airtel Limited, a group company of Bharti Enterprises, is India's leading integrated telecom services provider with an aggregate of 55.09 million customers as of end of November 2007, consisting of 52.96 million mobile customers. Bharti Airtel has been rated among the best performing companies in the world in the BusinessWeek IT 100 list 2007.
Bharti Airtel is structured into three strategic business units -- Mobile services, Telemedia services and Enterprise services. The mobile business provides mobile & fixed wireless services using GSM technology across 23 telecom circles. The Telemedia business provides broadband & telephone services in 94 cities and is foraying into the IPTV and DTH segments. The Enterprise services provide end-to-end telecom solutions to corporate customers and national & international long distance services to carriers. All these services are provided under the Airtel brand. Airtel's high-speed optic fibre network currently spans over 55,000 kms covering all the major cities in the country. The company has two international landing stations in Chennai that connects two submarine cable systems -- i2i to Singapore and SEA-ME-WE-4 to Europe. For more information, visit www.bhartiairtel.in
Statements in this announcement other than historical data and information constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause VeriSign's actual results to differ materially from those stated or implied by such forward-looking statements. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the uncertainty of future revenue and profitability and potential fluctuations in quarterly operating results due to such factors as the risk that VeriSign's announced strategic relationships, including the relationship described herein, may not result in additional products, services, customers, profits or revenues; and increased competition and pricing pressures. More information about potential factors that could affect the company's business and financial results is included in VeriSign's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2006 and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. VeriSign undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release.
