In a scene right out of a Bollywood potboiler, Vodafone’s (VOD) mobile partner in India, The Essar Group, are making moves that has the global wireless giant steaming mad. Hutchinson Whampoa sold 67% interest in Hutch India to Vodafone for about $13.7 billion earlier this year. The Essar Group owns 33% of Vodafone Essar.
The Essar Group has asked the Indian government to give its BPL Mobile division, permission to expand to lucrative Bombay and 20 other regions, where well it will compete with Vodafone and others. The application for expansion has come from Shippingstop.com, a company that is 51.24% owned by BPL Mobile. Rest is owned by BPL Communications, which is a holding company of BPL Mobile.
The Ruia family-run Essar dismissed the idea saying the law only bars a stake of more than 10% in two companies in the same licensed area. ‘We have a 33% stake in Vodafone Essar and only a 9.9% stake in (BPL Mobile). So where does the violation arise?’ said Essar spokesman Manish Kedia. (Telegeography)
Vodafone for now is keeping mum, though there is no way it can be happy with this situation.
this was a huge deal in India when I visited in Dec, every day you would get headline news about the Vodafone/Hutch deal. I expect some Vodafone fallout from this news longterm
Well, its the madness that TRAI – the telecom authority of India is responsible for
Apparently, you can now any number of operators in a given circle with all that limited spectrum that they have.
Last heard, a fertilizer company and a real estate developer have applied for telecom licenses – its total mess
Not good for Vodafone :( specially Mr Sarine – who took personal interest to get this deal done.
What an oxymoron, Telecom Authority, at times they seem to have no authority. This shows they can be pushed around.
The Ruia’s got their “Bakra” with Vodaphone, thank you Arun Sarin for playing along. Now they can focus on BPL, welcome to the India.
Manish,
can we translate :-)
essar found their sucker… that would be good enough translation or what?
om,
dead on. sorry should have provided the translation as well.
Another quality operator preparing to get their hands dirty service undoubtdly down in the dumps without realising the bad state of mobile operators spectrum in India