Athens, 18 February 2004 – OTEGlobe and SingTel (Singapore Telecommunications Ltd) today announced a strategic business partnership, which enables both carriers to collaborate in the area of international telecommunications. OTEGlobe is the wholly owned subsidiary for the international voice and data business of OTE, the leading telecoms operator in Greece.
OTEGlobe and SingTel will jointly focus on cost reduction and new revenue generation through exchange of premium quality international voice traffic and cooperation on other international services.
The partnership will also facilitate mutual traffic termination as well as hubbing traffic exchanges between both parties. SingTel will use OTEGlobe for call traffic termination in Greece, the Balkan region and Southern Europe. Likewise, OTEGlobe will use SingTel as its hub for call traffic termination in the Asia Pacific. SingTel will also provide high capacity gateways to terminate the voice traffic internationally at highly competitive wholesale rates.
Besides enjoying a stable exchange of traffic through mutual volume commitment, both carriers will provide mutual support to manage temporary surge in traffic, for example, in and out of Greece to Asia during the Olympics 2004.
OTEGlobe and SingTel will jointly explore the launch of global IP (Internet Protocol) telephony services in the Balkan region. For example, OTEGlobe can leverage on SingTel’s SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) infrastructure to offer IP telephony service to its customers.
Mr. Richard Tan, SingTel’s Vice President (International Carrier Services), said: "We are excited by this partnership with OTEGlobe as it enables us to leverage on each other’s geographical strength. SingTel has excellent telecommunications connectivity in this part of the world while OTEGlobe’s strength lies in Greece, Balkan region and Southern Europe. As the leading telecommunications provider in Asia, SingTel provides OTEGlobe with an instant gateway to the Asia Pacific."
Mr. Anastasios Angeloglou, OTEGlobe’s CEO, explained: "OTEGlobe’s mission to dynamically address the needs of the OTE Group of companies, as well as to continuously offer quality solutions for its customers at competitive pricing, is being materialized by OTEGlobe’s strategy of developing alliances with reliable partners of similar philosophy, vision sharing, innovative mindset and operational practices, such as SingTel."
OTEGlobe and SingTel entered into a GRX (GPRS Roaming Exchange) peering agreement in December 2003, which will facilitate GPRS roaming, MMS exchanges and 3G data services between the respective mobile affiliates. SingTel currently has GRX peering arrangements with 16 GRX providers, covering 130 mobile operators in 51 countries, while OTEGlobe has agreements with 11 leading GRX providers, enabling its customers to reach more than 100 mobile networks worldwide.