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Cellular investors offer their stakes to BPL Mobile

BPL Mobile, the telecom arm of the BPL Group, has been besieged with offers from cellular companies that are keen to exit the industry and are looking for buyers.

Ravi Shankar, chief financial officer of BPL Telecom, has been quoted as confirming that two companies, JT Mobile and Skycell, have approached them to sell their stake in their businesses and that there are more like these too.

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"We are waiting for the new telecom policy to be finalised and will decide only after that," he explained.

Shankar has said that though these two companies have made a direct approach, some other majors have also sounded them.

He has declined to disclose names, however.

BPL is one of the largest players in the telecom business and is active in the Bombay cellular circle, apart from Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

JT Mobile is one of the cellular operators in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and is promoted by five consortium partners: Jasmine Telecom, Telephone Organisation of Thailand, Parasrampuria Credit and Investments, Telia of Sweden and Raja Mohan Rao of United Telecom.

JT Mobile has dissolved its sister concern, JT Telecom, which had unsuccessfully bid for the basic telephone service business in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

BPL Telecom is seeing this as an excellent business opportunity in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh that are contiguous to the circles it operates in.

It will probably be one of the largest operators in the South if it starts operations in these two states as well.

BPL recently restructured its operations with a major thrust on a new division dubbed 'telecom system integration'.

This is expected to contribute Rs 200 million to the company's targeted income of Rs 1.6 billion this fiscal.

- Compiled from the Indian media

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