Etisalat Group has been given an award for innovation at the Mobile World Conference 2013 in Barcelona, Spain, and has announced a raft of new agreements
One of its products, Etisalat Commerce Programme ? Flous, an application for conducting a variety of financial transactions with mobile devices, was named best mobile money product in the Global Mobile Awards 2013.
Ahmad Abdulkarim Julfar, CEO of the UAE-based operator, said, "Throughout the week, we announced key partnerships that will carry our international operations forward with more momentum than ever."
These included the renewal of the four-year partnership with FC Barcelona that made it the footballing giant?s official partner in nine countries in the Middle East and Africa.
Etisalat also signed a partnership with Mahindra Comviva, a provider of mobile financial solutions. This alliance will give customers with basic mobile phones in Africa and Asia access to online services such as emailing, instant messaging, and social networking.
The operator announced it was one of 17 key organisations in the industry committed to Mozilla?s Firefox OS open web device initiative and also began a partnership with iMENA Holdings, a company focused on supporting the development of online consumer businesses in the region.
A deal with Huawei covered cooperation on key Etisalat projects, such as recent investments in 4G LTE ? fourth-generation mobile connectivity - while Alcatel-Lucent and Etisalat's deal focussed on expanding the former's 4G LTE coverage.
Finally, Etisalat also announced membership of the M2M (machine-to-machine) multi-operator alliance, an organisation dedicated to bringing M2M technology to the market.
