Airtel offers co-branded Opera Mini browsers to customers in India and South Asia

Bharti Airtel, a leading integrated telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa, just announced that it has signed a global arrangement with Opera Software to offer a customized and co-branded version of the Opera Mini Internet browser for Airtel mobile customers across its operations. With this, over 253 million Airtel customers across countries, including India, South Asia and Africa will now be able to leverage Opera Mini’s unique proxy-server-based technology to compress data by up to 90 percent and decrease their data transfer costs.

Designed for speed and ease of use, Opera Mini should provide speedy browsing on nearly any mobile phone. In some tests it is proven to make browsing up to nine times as fast as client-only mobile browsers on both 2/2.5G and 3G networks. With its small footprint and high level of usability, Opera Mini provides consistent user experience across a broad range of handsets.

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Tie up with Airtel

“We are excited to bring a superior browsing platform to Airtel mobile customers across India and South Asia by leveraging Opera Mini’s tried-and-tested set of solutions. We are confident that this association will be instrumental in helping us deliver a truly customized, enhanced and optimized browsing experience for our data users”, said K Srinivas, President – Consumer Business, Bharti Airtel.

“Our primary drive is to provide the best user experience, no matter what device people use. There are millions of users with basic mobile phones instead of smartphones, and Opera Mini gives even the most basic phone a smartphone-like web experience,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. “We are happy to welcome Airtel into our partner community. Airtel’s strong presence in emerging markets, combined with Opera Mini’s technology, will make the mobile web available to millions of new users."

Opera Software has agreements with 13 out of the top 30 operators, globally. Used by over 168 million users, Opera Mini is easily one of the world’s most popular web browsers on mobile phones. Opera Mini’s popularity in emerging markets can be credited to its wide acceptance and the fact that it comes preinstalled on quite a few of the basic/non-smartphone brands available currently.

You can download Opera Mini from m.opera.com on your mobile phone’s browser or visit the Airtel App Store, if you’re an Airtel customer.