Sending messages to your friends and relatives abroad using Facebook’s messaging app on your smart phone will soon get cheaper, if not free. This is because the social networking giant has teamed up with 18 different mobile networks in 14 countries to provide users with free or discounted data.

Facebook made the announcement regarding the partnership with the mobile operators on Monday via press release stating, “Through this promotion, free or discounted data access will be available in the coming months on Messenger for Android, Messenger for iOS and Facebook for Every Phone, which is now optimized for chat.”

Now before you get all too excited, keep in mind that this is just a promotion, meaning that this isn’t permanent, so it’ll only last for a few months. As to how long, it will depend on the carrier. Moreover, there’s still no word on whether a similar deal will roll out in the US.

Here’s the list of the partnered carriers:

• TMN (Portugal)

• Three (Ireland)

• Airtel and Reliance (India)

• Vivacom (Bulgaria)

• Backcell (Azerbaydzhan)

• Indosat, Smartfren, AXIS and XL Axiata (Indonesia)

• SMART (Philippines)

• DiGi (Malaysia)

• DTAC (Thailand)

• Viva (Bahrain)

• STC (Saudi Arabia)

• Oi (Brazil)

• Etisalat (Egypt)

• Tre (Italy)

By the way, Mike Isaac of AllThingsD points out interesting angles as to why the above countries were chosen, so check it out.

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