Bharti Airtel has agreed to acquire
Augere Wireless Broadband India, as the nation’s top telecom carrier looks to
consolidate its 4G footprint ahead of the launch of similar high speed
broadband services by rivals such as Vodafone India, Idea Cellular and Reliance
Jio Infocomm.
Upon acquisition Augere will become
a wholly owned subsidiary of Airtel. Augere had won a block of 20 MHz of 4G
spectrum in the Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh circle for Rs 122.46 crore in 2010
auctions. The company owned by France Telecom and a clutch of private equity
funds such as Harbinger Capital and New Silk Route initially announced plans of
rolling out 4G services in late 2011.
The latest move will allow Airtel to
expand its 4G high speed broadband footprint ahead of the 4G launch by Reliance
Jio and Vodafone, scheduled for December. Idea launch is slated for early next
year. Airtel had bought airwaves in the 2300 MHz band in Kolkata, Maharashtra,
Punjab and Karnataka in the 2010 spectrum auctions and later acquired
chip-maker Qualcomm airwaves in another four circles of Delhi, Mumbai, Kerala
and Haryana.
Both 4G and 3G spectrum are
critical for the next phase of growth of mobile phone operators as mobile data
increasingly replaces voices as the main growth driver for them. Airtel posted
almost 80% growths in its mobile data revenue in the first fiscal quarter
through June. In March, Airtel entered into a partnership with China Mobile,
the world’s largest telecom operator.
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