Asia and Africa telecoms company Bharti Airtel has announced that it has signed a deal with Comviva to provide VAS across its African operations. 

Airtel, which has operations in 19 countries across Asia and Africa, has secured Comvivas services in a five-year deal. 

Comviva will manage all VAS nodes and provide services across Airtels 16 African countries. The companies say that, with the signing of the deal, Airtel Africa becomes the first telecom services operator in Africa to have a managed services agreement for its complete value added services portfolio.

Comviva will launch a new Managed VAS Services package later this month, and this promises to manage all VAS nodes, as well Airtels technology, standards, and applications services. 

Airtel is a believer in adopting managed services. Airtel Africa has outsourced its core customer service functions, including call centres and back office operations to IBM, Tech Mahindra and Spanco. In September 2010, the company also selected IBM to manage its IT systems.

“As we expand our operations and service portfolio in Africa, we aim to deliver a broad portfolio of services and a superior experience for our customers,” says Manoj Kohli CEO (International) and joint MD of Airtel Africa. “By handing over management of operations to Comviva, we can enhance efficiencies in our operations and bring a closer focus on marketing initiatives that will help drive usage and engagement levels across our customer base. We expect this move to further support brand differentiation by enabling faster time to market, enhanced service performance and greater innovation – all of which will benefit our customers.”

Manoranjan Mohapatra, Comvivas CEO, says: “As the operator portfolio has grown in breadth and complexity, there is a growing need to create greater operational simplicity and enhance efficiencies whilst enabling improved service performance. The Managed VAS approach will enable formulation of a clear end-to-end product strategy founded on a customer-driven roadmap, which will drive service uptake and satisfaction levels, whilst optimizing cost structures.”