Etisalat and Telefónica, two leading telecom operators worldwide, on Sunday jointly announced that they have signed a strategic partnership agreement to enter into a broad-based co-operation. The partnership will allow both Groups to collaborate on a range of strategic areas given their capabilities and expertise. As a result, the companies will strengthen their capabilities to address global industry trends and compete in each of their markets, capturing efficiencies and advancing initiatives aimed at better serving their customers needs across their respective footprints. Under the terms of this agreement, the two parties will establish mechanisms to enable them draw on each other’s experience in various strategic areas, including collaboration on technological standardization, new global technology initiatives, R&D, and new emerging products and services designed to capture the digital growth opportunities such as M2M, financial services or cloud-based services. Both companies have also agreed to jointly work on procurement, international capacity and wholesale services as well as offering enhanced support for multinational customers of each operator taking advantage of the benefits of the Telefónica Partners Programme. From / Gulf Today