www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Zain today announced the expansion of the One Network platform with the admission of Sierra Leone to the borderless connection. Following the move, Zain customers travelling to Sierra Leone will not be charged roaming fees to access voice and data services.

The admission of Sierra Leone to the One Network brings to 18 the total number of countries, spread over Africa and the Middle East, on the borderless platform.

The One Network service which was first introduced in East Africa two years ago, is a borderless mobile phone network that allows all prepaid and post-paid Zain customers when travelling in 18 countries in the Middle East and Africa to be treated as local customers allowing them to make calls and SMS at local rates and to receive calls and sms free-of-charge.

One Network also enables them to top-up their mobile phone while on travel with locally purchased scratch cards, which are widely available from more than one million sales outlets in any of the countries in which One Network is operational.

The service guarantees customers’ convenience since there is no need for pre-registration, no extra fees, no roaming deposits, and no complicated dialing formats while travelling. This reduces the cost of making telephone calls considerably, said Mr. Rene Meza, Zain Kenya Managing Director.

He said the process of bringing together all Zain operations under One Network was ongoing. In terms of country footprint, Zain is the third largest mobile operator in the world with a commercial presence in 24 countries.