WHATEVER the outcome of the World Cup, Cellhire of York will be a winner.

The Clifton Park-based mobile solutions specialist, which is renowned for getting around expensive “roaming” charges abroad, has agreed a strategic partnership with the South African MTN Group.

MTN (Mobile Telecommunication Networks) is a mobile operator which is one of the major sponsors of the FIFA World Cup 2010 and Cellhire is the first company outside South Africa to become its international service provider.

The deal will see Cellhire providing more than 7,000 voice and data connections at the event – worth more than £1 million to the company.

It will represent savings of thousands of pounds for competing teams and football associations, sponsors, journalists, media professionals and corporate travellers in the republic throughout the event which starts on June 11.

Cellhire’s help will be particularly vital for the world’s press corps because it will provide cost effective, high speed solutions that enable the instant upload of photographs and contact with newsdesks. It is not the first time that the £20 million turnover company has become involved in the World Cup, but this is the most lucrative.

Tim Williams, Cellhire’s chairman and chief executive, said: “The forthcoming the World Cup represents a huge opportunity for us. Historically, mobile communications in South Africa has been both expensive and occasionally unreliable. Our partnership with MTN alleviates these problems. We’re very excited about the forthcoming event.”

The company is “supporting” countries from all over the globe including Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, USA and, of course, England.

In the months building up to the World Cup, Cellhire has also been developing innovative products and services to provide new, cost effective technology.

That includes its DataManager solution which enables customers to keep track of the total amount of data used, even alerting them when usage has reached a selected level.

A specific “World Cup Portal” has also been developed for corporate customers, which allows access to a number of extra services including online billing and TextMyBill, designed to keep down communication costs.

Cellhire has assembled a special technical support team in South Africa to assist customers during the World Cup itself. Clients can therefore focus on conducting business without having to worry about network reliability and the cost of keeping in touch.

Established in 1987, Cellhire won the Queen’s Award for International Enterprise in 2005. It has offices throughout the UK, US, France, Germany, Japan and China, and employs 97 people, 48 of whom are based at its Clifton Park headquarters.

Cellhire has also developed strategic relationships with BT, O2 and Vodafone in the UK, as well as with numerous partners globally.