Bharti Airtel said net sales rose 7.9 per cent
Zain Telecom on Wednesday said it would earn $3.3 billion from sale of its African assets to Bharti Airtel for $10.7 billion even as the Indian operator said the deal is well-priced.
US retail chain Walmart is awaiting a decision by its board decision on its India strategy, including its partnership with the Bharti group.
India's telecom subscriber base grew to over 1.17 billion in October with Bharti Airtel maintaining its leadership in mobile subscriber addition that accounts for over 98 per cent of total connections in the country, according to the monthly report released by sector regulator Trai on Wednesday. This is the second consecutive month when Airtel added highest number of subscribers. In September, it had regained the leadership position in subscriber addition after a gap of four years. The Sunil Bharti Mittal-led company added 3.67 million new customers in October, taking its total wireless customer base to 330.28 million in October 2020, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (Trai) report said.
Sunil Mittal is seeking subsidies from the Indian government to revive the dying fixed-line phones in the country. The chairman of Bharti Airtel, the leading private sector GSM service provider, has sought the removal of licence fee and service tax that are burdening the sector.
The Bharti group has applied to the government for a licence to operate direct-to-home television services.
Bharti Retail, a subsidiary of Bharti Enterprises, on Monday said it will increase the head count to 60,000 by 2015 from 2,000 now as it has set a target to become a $1-billion company by then.
Bharti Retail exuded confidence that it is 'on course' to become a billion dollar company by 2015, and will open 40 more stores in the next three months notwithstanding the economic slowdown.
Bharti Teletech, India's largest fixed line phone manufacturer and flagship of the AirTel Group, on Friday announced its entry into digital set top boxes used for the direct-to-home services with an initial investment of $2 million.
Future Gaming and Hotel Services whose director is the lottery magnate Santiago Martin is the top purchaser of electoral bonds having purchased bonds worth Rs 1,368, according to data uploaded by the Election Commission of India on its website on Thursday.
Bharti Airtel on Tuesday said there was no government scrutiny on the company's decision to buy back 5.6 per cent stake from Vodafone and the transaction was within the foreign investment norms in the telecom sector.
Bharti Wal-Mart Pvt Ltd, the joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and retail giant Wal-Mart, opened its first cash-and-carry (wholesale) store in India at Amritsar.
After dominating the Indian mobile telephone market, Bharti Airtel is all set to launch 3-in-1 services - phone, internet and cable TV - across 90 cities to its fixed-line customers.
State-owned telecom major BSNL has awarded a major chunk of its international traffic to UK and Europe to Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti, virtually eliminating incumbent carrier VSNL.\n
The Wall Street Journal quoting two people familiar with the situation said Bharti has contacted West Asian sovereign wealth funds for additional cash to back its MTN bid for a majority stake. Further, the paper quoted another person and said that Bharti has already negotiated about $12 billion in financing from a group of banks that includes Standard Chartered PLC, but the deal may require more resources.
Sunil Mittal-promoted Bharti Enterprises, offering telecom services, on Wednesday picked up 4.99 per cent stake in private sector Bank of Punjab for a consideration of Rs 24.52 crore (Rs 245.2 million).
After the transaction with Temasek, Singtel will hold 47.39 per cent in Bharti Telecom.
Indian mobile phone users will have to pay more if the service providers are charged for spectrum, which was earlier given free to the operators, chairman of the country's largest telecom company Bharti Airtel Sunil Mittal has said.
Bharti will have to deal with 15 different regulatory regimes in Africa as opposed to just one in India.
The auction last year had seen a muted response on account of high spectrum cost.
Several leading industrialists, including Reliance Industries CMD Mukesh Ambani, Vedanta Resources Limited executive chairman Anil Agarwal, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons Ratan Tata, Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra, Paytm Founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Welspun Group chairman and Assocham president B K Goenka, attended the swearing-in ceremony.
Even as the government deferred the decision to enhance foreign investment limit in telecom, Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti Group said on Thursday that its offer to buy Canadian TIW's 27.5 per cent stake in Hexacom has been terminated
GSM operators lobby COAI has already challenged the norms announced by Department of Telecom on October 19, which include allowing dual technology for mobile services and enhanced subscriber-linked criteria for spectrum allocation. In view of protests by GSM operators, the Centre had asked Telecom Engineering Centre, the technical wing of DoT, to study the norms as suggested by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
Bharti Group chairman Sunil Mittal on Tuesday said the unified licensing regime proposed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India could not be pursued in its present form, as it was in contradiction of the TDSAT judgement.
The Bharti Group will on Monday announce a tie-up with Walmart for its retail operations, under which the world's largest retailer would manage the back end operations.
Telecom player Bharti on Thursday said it would pass on the full benefits of the cut in Access Deficit Charge to its subscribers from February 1, when the new regime comes into effect.
Telecom giant Bharti Airtel on Wednesday called off discussions with MTN for the $23-billion merger deal saying the South African government has rejected the proposed structure.
Telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Friday said it has signed an agreement to buy Vodafone's 4.7 per cent stake in Indus Towers on the condition that the proceeds will be used for investment in Vodafone Idea and clearing its dues towards the mobile tower company. Debt-ridden Vodafone Idea (VIL) has been unable to pay dues to Indus Towers and both VIL and promoter Vodafone have proposed a payment plan to clear the outstanding amount by July 15. In the meantime, VIL has committed to pay certain minimum amount each month to Indus Towers.
Sunil Mittal promoted Bharti Group garnered the largest subscriber base of 37.50 lakh (3.75 million), followed by BSNL and Hutchison Group.\n
Bharti Group offering mobile services under AirTel brand has become the first private telecom conglomerate to complete nationwide network in all 23 circles at an investment of Rs 15,000 crore (Rs 150 billion) till now.
Bharti group on Tuesday announced a whopping $13 billion investment for the next five years of which at least 70 per cent would go into expansion of domestic telecom operations
In yet another major outsourcing deal, Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti Group on Tuesday entered into a over Rs 580 crore ($125 million) deal with telecom major Nokia to expand the network in eight circles.
Bharti Airtel is understood to have entered into an agreement with IBM for managing its IT and network-related services.
The telecom to look at opportunities to acquire another firm in India.
The key team members are in place. Prateek Agrawal, the equity head is from ABN AMRO AMC, Sujay Das, the fixed income head came from DSP Merrill Lynch AMC and Nanda Kishore S, the marketing head is from Sundaram BNP Paribas AMC. Dasgupta himself is from Deutsche AMC. Bharti-AXA has a 35-member strong team, which would be expanded to 70 by June.
After ending its wholesale partnership with Walmart, Bharti Retail has decided to merge with the Future group
Billionaire Gautam Adani's Group on Wednesday announced the acquisition of SoftBank Group Corp's renewable power business in India for a deal value of $3.5 billion (approximately Rs 25,500 crore), to become the world's largest solar company. In a statement, Adani Green Energy Ltd, the renewable energy unit of the port-to-energy conglomerate, said it has inked share purchase agreements to buy 100 per cent of SB Energy India from SoftBank and Bharti Group. Without giving deal details, the statement said the transaction values SB Energy India at an enterprise valuation of approximately $3.5 billion, it stated. The transaction marks the largest acquisition in the renewable energy sector in India.
SoftBank will hold majority stake in the joint venture.
Sunil Mittal-promoted Bharti Group on Friday announced a net profit of Rs 619 crore (Rs 6.19 billion) during the 2003-04 fiscal as against a loss of Rs 134 crore (Rs 1.34 billion) in the previous fiscal.
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