The Bharti group is planning to transfer the cellular operations in the Himachal Pradesh circle, currently operated by Bharti Telenet, to Bharti Cellular.
Bharti Tele-Ventures has recently sought approval of the Department of Telecommunications to transfer the business. Bharti Telenet is a fixed-line operator, while Bharti Cellular is the cellular service provider of the group.
Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Tele-Ventures, said: "We have got the Himachal Pradesh licence for cellular operations long time ago, and since we want to make Bharti Telenet a pure basic service provider, we have decided to transfer its cellular business to Bharti Cellular."
"We hope to get government nod soon. The main advantage of this changeover will be on the operational front. We want a separate set of companies for cellular and fixed-line businesses. At a later stage, we will bring all cellular subsidiaries under one umbrella," Akhil Gupta, joint managing director of Bharti Tele-Ventures, said.
Currently, apart from Bharti Cellular, Bharti Tele-Ventures has cellular subsidiaries in Bharti Mobitel, Bharti Mobinet, SC Cellular and Bharti Mobile. Both Bharti Cellular and Bharti Telenet are 100 per cent subsidiaries of Bharti Tele-Ventures.
As on September 30, Bharti had a cellular subscriber base of 12,015 in Himachal Pradesh, a market share of around 67 per cent in the circle.
At present, Bharti provides fixed-line services in the Madhya Pradesh circle which has a total user base of 1.28 lakh. It is also in the process of developing basic telecom networks in the Delhi, Haryana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu circles. It is also deploying a fibre optic network across India to offer national long distance voice and data services.
Regarding its fixed-line services, the company aims to have a presence in data-centric circles having high telecommunications revenue potential, with a particular focus on high density business and industrial districts.
