Asia's largest alliance of mobile operators today welcomed Smart Communications, Inc., the Philippines' leading mobile operator, into the group. With SMART's participation, the alliance has expanded its coverage footprint to over 130 million mobile subscribers in nine countries and regions.

The alliance's other members are Far EasTone Telecommunications Co., Ltd. (Taiwan), Hutchison Essar Limited (India), Hutchison Telecommunications (Hong Kong) Limited (Hong Kong and Macau), PT Indosat Tbk (Indonesia), KT Freetel Co., Ltd. (South Korea), NTT DoCoMo, Inc. (Japan) and StarHub Ltd. (Singapore).

"We welcome Smart Communications' participation in our alliance. They will undoubtedly bring a wealth of experience in their own market which will help us deliver similar innovative services to all our member customers," said Mr. Chan Kin Hung, chairman of the alliance. "Their inputs have already been invaluable as we prepare to launch new services in the Asia-Pacific region."

The alliance, created in April 2006, was formed to enhance members' competitiveness in international roaming services in their own countries/regions and across Asia-Pacific. In addition to offering on conventional roaming via GSM/GPRS and/or W-CDMA networks, alliance members have started working on roaming with HSDPA technology for high-speed downlinks with each other.

Beyond just roaming, most member operators have already begun providing caller ID and short-code services to their customers as they roam into another member operator's network. This gives business travelers quick and easy access to their home operator's voice mail or customer-support centres. Alliance members are also currently working with multinational corporate clients to provide international data roaming packages and are considering the possibility of joint procurement to reduce costs.

In conjunction with the introduction of its newest member, the alliance today also announced its official name and logo, as well as launched a new website, as its members begin to roll out value-added roaming and corporate mobile services amongst each other.

The name -Conexus Mobile Alliance- signifies the cooperative network of connections between people, places and ideas, one of the alliance's key missions.

Said Mr. Chan, "The new logo and name encapsulates all the brand qualities that the alliance stands for - connectivity, convenience and cooperation among members. It is a name we believe will be recognized and remembered when business travellers roam in member countries."