Norwegian telecoms group Telenor said on Monday it planned to expand operations in India to offer services nationwide 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 price cuts 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.
Brekke, a 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 with 1.2 million subscribers during 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.
The Telenor group entered the Asian region in 1996 through its investment in Grameenphone in Bangladesh.
The region has generated about 30 percent of group revenue but the launch in the Indian market should boost the contribution from Asia this year, Brekke said.
Via Reuters
