Russian operator MegaFon has become the latest carrier to join Teleónica’s partnership programme, which aims to pool resource, know-how and purchasing power across an international roster of telcos.

The deal will also see Telefónica extend the range of its international enterprise offering to Russia, with Megafon’s enterprise base given access to services across the Spanish incumbent’s footprint.

Telefónica added that the two firms may look to collaborate on cloud and M2M offerings as well.

Telefonica’s partnership programme includes operators with which the firm has equity relationships, like China Mobile and Telecom Italia, as well as non-related players including Bouygues, KPN and Telenor. The Spanish player said that the programme now has reach into 52 countries and a combined customer headcount of 1.5 billion.

Eduardo Navarro, Telefónica Group’s chief strategy and alliances officer, stated: “We are committed to jointly work to take advantage of our outstanding strategic alignment and to make available the benefits of Telefónica’s scale and breadth of business through the Telefónica Partners Program, as well as to tackle together the challenges the industry transition is posing to operators worldwide”.