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Bharti Airtel To Acquire Tata Teleservices’s Consumer Mobile Business
Bharti Airtel office building in Gurugram. (Pradeep Gaur /Mint via Getty Images)
In what will come as a significant boost to India’s largest telecom operator, Tata Sons Limited will sell its consumer mobile business to Bharti Airtel Limited, reported Mint.
More than 40 million Tata customers will join Bharti Airtel – a crucial leap in subscriber base for the telecom operator ahead of the merger between Vodafone India Limited and Idea Cellular Limited.
According to the Mint report, “...the acquisition of Tata Teleservices will give it access to 178.5 MHz spectrum (of which 71.3 MHz is liberalized) in the 850, 1800 and 2100 MHz bands and help it strengthen its 4G coverage”.
Anil Ambani had warned that the telecom sector was on the verge of becoming a monopoly, and he is right, what with several announcements of mergers in the recent past.
“In due course, India’s telecom industry is likely to be reduced to a triopoly, with Airtel, Vodafone-Idea and Reliance Jio being the last ones left standing,” wrote R Jagannathan in early August.
“The reason why we may end up with a triopoly in telecom is not Jio’s muscle power, but the huge investment needs of its main rivals in order to retain their customers. When Airtel and Vodafone-Idea start reinvesting in the business, the RComs and Tatas will get elbowed out.”
The Hindu Business Line’s national telecom editor Thomas K Thomas tweeted that this is Airtel’s seventh acquisition in five years.
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