Norwegian telecoms group Telenor said on January 18 it planned to expand its operations in India to offer nationwide services this year, which will mean its investments in Asia will be higher than last year.
Telenor, which has operations in eight of India's 22 telecom zones, has no plan to join in the price-cutting in the world's fastest-growing mobile market even though its current tariffs were not the cheapest, Sigve Brekke, head of Telenor Group's Asian operations, told Reuters.
"We are very satisfied with our operations in India because we are going to launch faster and bigger than we thought," Brekke, who is based in Bangkok, said in an interview.
The former Norwegian deputy defence minister said Telenor planned to bid for 3G licences for only parts of India, since it would be very expensive to have a nationwide network.
Telenor has bought into a young Indian telecom firm, Unitech Wireless, a unit of property developer Unitech Ltd, which started services in December under the Uninor brand.
It has said it planned to expand to five more zones early this year. The company holds telecom licences for all of India and is aiming for 8 percent of the Indian mobile market by 2018. India is currently the world's fastest-growing wireless market and the second-largest with more than 500 million users.
Despite a successful launch and 1.2 million subscribers in its first month of operations, Telenor maintained its India business forecast of breaking even at the EBITDA level in three years and operational cash flow level in five years, Brekke said.
Excluding India, where growth will be very high, Telenor expected its operations in four countries in Asia to post average "mid-single-digit" revenue growth this year, led by strong growth in Bangladesh and Pakistan, Brekke said.
"Growth in India will be very high since it started from zero. For the four countries, Bangladesh and Pakistan will grow most, followed by Malaysia and Thailand," he said, adding a better economic outlook should boost growth.
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