A group of nine major operators will work together to make it easier for partner companies such as AirBnB and Spotify to “efficiently and quickly bring innovative products and services to customers around the world”, across a potential customer base of one billion in more than 80 countries.

According to a statement issued by Russian operator MTS, other partners are BT, Deutsche Telekom, Reliance Jio Infocomm, Millicom, Orange, Rogers, TeliaSonera and TIM.

In a statement, it was also said that the group have established relationships with 30 “innovative partner businesses” including AirBnB, Celltick, Disconnect, Idoomoo, Magisto, Mojio and Spotify.

The intention of the alliance is to exchange best practice on how to bring partner propositions to the market, to work on joint partner scouting, and to exchange knowledge about trends and services within the group.

The group is also described as an “open network of like-minded operators worldwide with complementary geographical footprints”, across a range of product categories including mobile, fixed, B2B and B2C.

It will be expanding to include additional operators “soon”.

“We as operators can provide partners with the best networks and easy distribution to customers. And the partners enable us to provide our customers with the best and most innovative products and services,” claimed Christian von Reventlow, chief product and innovation officer at Deutsche Telekom.

Jesper Hedblom, head of commercial at TeliaSonera, said: “By teaming up with our great peers we’ll get the possibility to work with partners and access innovations that we otherwise might not have come across.”