Another round of stake dilution is expected soon in the Bharti group’s tower company, Bharti Infratel.

“Some investors, who got left out in the previous round because of its timing, would be accommodated now,” Bharti Airtel joint managing director Akhil Gupta told DNA Money on Wednesday.

The investment this time round is likely to be lower than $1 billion. Gupta, along with Bharti president & CEO Manoj Kohli, were speaking to this newspaper after the announcement of the company’s third quarter financial results.

In December 2007, a clutch of international investors including Temasek Holdings, Goldman Sachs, Macquarie, Citigroup, Investment Corporation of Dubai, AIF Capital and India Equity Partners had together put in $1 billion in Bharti Infratel for around 8 to 10% stake.

The enterprise valuation of Bharti Infratel was estimated in the range of $10 to $12.5 billion, the company said.

Bharti officials have maintained that the group would like to hold only a minority stake in the tower company over a period of time.

Besides the tower business, the Bharti group is also bullish on capturing the overseas market in telecom.

Bharti is aiming to hold “controlling stake” in telcos across some of the emerging markets globally, so that its business model of `low tariff’ and `high usage’ can be replicated there.

The top officials of Bharti are confident of taking that route, “whenever there’s an opportunity”.
Meanwhile, it is all set to start telecom operations in Sri Lanka in the first half of the next fiscal, and is likely to tap a few other Saarc countries in the coming months for offering telecom services.

On simplification of tariff plans, Bharti officials came out in support of the telecom regulator Trai’s recent proposal. From the current 25 tariff plans that are permitted per telecom player in a circle, Bharti wants the schemes to be reduced to a “single-digit number”. Customers should not be confused by multiple choice of tariff plans, they said.

Bharti is also eyeing an opportunity to rope in new mobile phone subscribers once `phone number portability’ comes into effect.

“As market leaders, Bharti will benefit,” officials said. They added that with growing competition in the market and code division multiple access (CDMA) majors branching into global systems for mobile communications (GSM) service, Bharti’s leadership position is expected to grow after number portability.

“CDMA players will be vulnerable as they move into GSM. And higher number of GSM players in the market is good for Bharti,” they said. Number portability would allow a phone user to shift from one service provider to another, while retaining his number.

As for rival Reliance Communications demanding withdrawal of “extra” spectrum from some of the GSM players including Bharti, Akhil Gupta dismissed it as illogical. “We got spectrum as per the government policy, and did not snatch it,” said Gupta.“So, there’s absolutely no case for withdrawal of spectrum.”

On Trai’s proposal to impose penalty on telecom operators for failing to check unwanted commercial communication, the Bharti top management is of the opinion that “whoever violates the law should be penalised.”

But, they indicated that telecom operators should not be held responsible for every instance of non-compliance with the telemarketing norms. TRAI recently proposed a financial penalty of up to Rs 20,000 for operators per instance of non-compliance with the telemarketing norms.

Meanwhile, the media businesses of Bharti - direct-to-home broadcasting and internet protocol television are slated for a launch in the first quarter of 2007-2008. Bharti Enterprises’ retail venture is also set to take off later this year, when the first few retail stores will be set up.

 

Source : Dna