Madrid, Spain & Zürich, Switzerland, September 27th 2011 –Telefónica and Swiss mobile and fixed operator Sunrise today jointly announced that Sunrise will join the Telefónica Partners Program. The Program will allow Sunrise to leverage on Telefónica’s scale and to cooperate on key business topics. The partnership will allow both companies to capture additional efficiencies while enhancing service offerings to their respective customers.
By entering into this partnership, Sunrise will be able to access a set of services that will make some of Telefónica Group's scale benefits available to Sunrise.
The companies agreed to cooperate under the framework of Telefónica Partners Program in the following areas: the possibility of conducting procurement of network equipment, IT and devices, among others, through TGS, Telefónica’s global procurement services unit; the provision of services to multinationals companies.
Both companies will also explore collaboration opportunities in other areas such as Telefónica’s innovative products and services to capture growth opportunities of the digital world and international capacity and wholesale services. The partnership is effective immediately.
By accessing Telefónica’s capabilities and scale, it is expected that Sunrise will increase its competitiveness and reinforce its ability to accelerate growth in its market. 'We are delighted of having Sunrise, a leading operator in the Swiss market, joining Telefónica’s Partner Program', said Mario Martin, Telefónica’s Director of Strategic Alliances and Industrial Partnerships, 'and we are committed to jointly work to take advantage of our complementarity and Telefónica’s reach and scale benefits as well as leading innovation on the digital world'.
Commenting on the partnership, Oliver Steil, CEO of Sunrise Communications AG, said that !Maintaining our high pace of technological improvement is one reason for this collaboration. As revenue from voice traffic declines and demand for data delivery at home and on mobile devices jumps, large investments are planned to complete infrastructure such as high- speed mobile-phone networks or fiber-optic technology.
This deal gets many benefits for both companies whilst ensuring quality for our customers.
The Telefónica Partners Program is an initiative that makes available to selected operators and under commercial terms a host of services that allows partners to be supported by Telefónica’s scale and knowledge.
Sunrise
Sunrise is the largest private telecommunications provider in Switzerland, with offices in Zurich, Bern, Biel/Bienne, and Renens. Sunrise has 2.95 million customers, who use its services in the areas of mobile telephony, landline network, and the Internet. Business Sunrise offers customized communication solutions for business customers. The mobile network, which is based on GSM, EDGE, UMTS, and HSPA+ technologies, provides over 99% of the population with state-of-the-art mobile network services and permits transfer rates of up to 21 Mbps. A high-performance fiber optic network, with a total length of 10,000 km, enables high-quality voice and data services to be offered throughout the country. Thanks to unbundling, Sunrise can reach 85% of all households with its own broadband structure and operates 90 Sunrise centers across Switzerland. Sunrise is a brand of Sunrise Communications AG.
Telefónica
Telefónica is one of the world's largest telecommunications network operators by market capitalisation and number of customers. It centres its activities mainly on the fixed and mobile telephony businesses, while its broadband business is the key growth driver underpinning both. It operates in 25 countries and its customer base exceeds 295 million globally. Telefónica has a strong foothold in Spain, Europe and Latin America, the latter region being the lynchpin of its growth strategy.
Telefónica is a 100% private company with more than 1.5 million direct shareholders. Its share capital consists of 4,563,996,485 ordinary shares traded on the Spanish stock exchanges (Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia), as well as on the London, Tokyo, New York, Lima, Buenos Aires and São Paulo stock exchanges.
