This story is from March 21, 2017

India’s Big Club helms telecom story

India’s Big Club helms telecom story
Mumbai: India’s telecom market is firmly in control of local heavyweights — Kumar Mangalam Birla, Sunil Mittal and Mukesh Ambani — after foreign players retreat from a sector with over a billion subscribers.
Though Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao emphasised the company wasn’t exiting India, it was clearly “deconsolidating” the troubled Indian business from its global footprint. Recent M&A deals have seen Norwegian giant Telenor selling out to Bharti Airtel and Malaysian telco Aircel and Russian operator Sistema folding into Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications.

Japan’s NTT DoCoMo decided to exit an under-performing joint venture with Tata Teleservices, while Bahrain Telecommunications (Batelco) snapped ties with C Sivasankaran’s S Tel and UAE’s Etisalat exited the country after the spectrum auction scandal, which erupted six years ago.
Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel), remains a large but passive shareholder in Bharti Airtel. Then there were others like Australia’s Telstra and South African major MTN calling off India plans, following the spectrum controversy and intense market competition.
“Don’t expect any reduction in the market competition in medium term, as large telcos would continue to keep the intensity high. However, in the long term this consolidation would restore some pricing power and give better bargaining terms with vendors and suppliers. The industry will be left with five major players namely — Vodafone-Idea, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, RCom-Aircel-Sistema and BSNL plus MTNL,” Harsh Jagnani, VP, sector head, Icra, said.
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