Wall Street Journal | March 29, 2011 | Kenan Machado
MUMBAI—Bharti Airtel Ltd., Vodafone Essar Ltd. and Idea Cellular Ltd. are close to signing an agreement to share their third-generation radio bandwidth, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said Monday.
The agreement “is almost in the final stages,” the person said. “Just the details need to be worked out.”
Idea Cellular on Monday introduced its third-generation mobile-telephone services in four Indian states and said it will spend 42 billion rupees ($939 million) to expand the program to 4,000 towns by the end of March 2012. Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar, the Indian unit of Vodafone Group PLC, have already launched similar services.
Bharti Airtel has licenses and radio bandwidth to offer 3G services in 13 service areas, while Idea holds licenses for 11 service areas and Vodafone Essar nine areas.
Spokesmen for Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar didn’t immediately respond to emailed requests for comments.
The agreement, if signed, would allow the companies to reduce their average cost of radio bandwidth by accessing each other’s networks in areas where they don’t own 3G licenses.
The companies had bought 3G licenses and bandwidth through an auction last year. While Bharti paid 122.95 billion rupees for 3G spectrum, Vodafone Essar paid 116.18 billion rupees and Idea Cellular 57.69 billion rupees.
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