Bharti Airtel has announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with VeriSign, Inc. The companies agreed to form a strategic market partnership to jointly launch security services, to deliver VeriSign's identity protection, managed security and fraud detection services, and to support the development of the next-generation Internet infrastructure in the Indian market.

Under this arrangement, Bharti Airtel will become VeriSign's Strategic Market Partner and will deploy VeriSign's services in India. Additionally, as a part of the partnership, Bharti Airtel will utilise a number of VeriSign's capabilities, including VeriSign Identity Protection services.

Dr. Jai Menon, Director - IT & Innovation and Group Chief Information Officer of Bharti Airtel Limited, said, "The partnership with VeriSign demonstrates our intent to create a globally admired telecommunications company. Our combined strength will provide the Indian market with the latest Internet and IP infrastructure services, strongly supported by our local resources. We look forward to seeing the benefits of these services internally and for our customers."

"VeriSign expects significant growth in the Indian market over the next several years. Our strategy was to find a partner that shared our vision for next-generation network services and had the capability to execute, and Bharti Airtel was our clear choice," said Chris Parsons, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy at VeriSign. "Bharti's commitment to enabling India to become a global leader in technology is clearly demonstrated by their actions."

The companies also announced that the new partnership expects to deliver its first set of services to market in 2008.