Zain, the leading telecommunications group has announced it has re-branded its entire African operations from Celtel to Zain. The mobile solutions company services over 50 million customers in 22 countries across the Middle East and Africa.

What this means is that 14 African countries including Nigeria will immediately rebrand to Zain. Other country operators include: Kenya, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia as well as in Francophone countries such as Gabon, Democratic Republic of Congo, amongst others. Zain plans to launch its mobile operation in Ghana later in 2008.

Zain also announced the creation of the world’s first cross-continental borderless network, extending and linking its ‘One Network’ service between Africa and the Middle East. The new Zain brand has a vibrant and colourful identity to create “A Wonderful World” - a world linking two continents (Africa and the Middle East).

The ‘One Network’ service will be available to 500 million people stretching from the west coast of Africa to the Middle East, covering an area larger than the United States of America. Since it was launched on August 1, customers can make calls and send messages at local rates when communicating with a travelling Zain customer who will receive incoming calls free-of-charge and be able to make calls back home at local rates.

What’s more?

Another interesting thing about this service is that, pre-paid customers can top up their phones with recharge cards bought from either their home country or more than one million outlets available in one of the 15 ‘One Network’ countries. Then, the ’One Network’ service is automatically activated upon crossing the geographic border into one of the countries, with no prior registration required or sign-up fee.

The Zain Group aims towards becoming one of the top ten global mobile telecommunications companies by 2011.

Via: Zain Press Release