Bharti Airtel says will link its customers across the 20 countries in Asia and Africa with Opera mini internet browsers.

The company announced that it has signed a global arrangement with Opera Software across its operations. "With this, over 253 million Airtel customers across countries including India, South Asia and Africa will now be able to leverage Opera Mini's unique proxy-server-based technology to compress data by up to 90% and decrease their data transfer costs."

Designed for speed and ease of use, Opera Mini provides remarkably fast browsing on nearly any mobile phone. It is proven to make browsing up to nine times as fast as client-only mobile browsers on both 2/2.5G and 3/3.75G networks.

With its small footprint and high level of usability, Opera Mini provides a consistent user experience across a broad range of handsets.