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Bharti Telenet in Rs 10 billion 'basic' investment blueprint

K Giriprakash

Bharti Telenet, the basic services subsidiary of the Bharti group, plans to invest around Rs 10 billion in the initial phase for setting up basic telephony services in New Delhi, Karnataka, Haryana and Tamil Nadu.

Bharti Telenet Ltd's chief executive officer Cherian Kuruvila said in Karnataka alone, over Rs 7.50 billion will be invested in over three phases. "We plan to offer value-added services and provide a bouquet of services which includes, voice, data, Internet and broadband services to our customers," Kuruvila said.

He said network of backbone infrastructure is being put in place for customers to have last mile access. Bharti plans to lay around 35,000 km of optical fibre cables by March 2003. Already, 10,000 km of cables has already been laid. Bharti made its first foray into basic services in Madhya Pradesh.

In Karnataka, Bharti has tied up with a consortium, which is laying optical fibre cable network in Bangalore. Apart from the work carried out by the consortium, Bharti itself will lay around 1,000 km of cables in Bangalore.

Kuruvila said in certain areas in Bangalore, BPL, which is a consortium member, will partner Bharti for laying optical fibre cables on a cost-sharing basis.

He said even though pricing has been fixed by the telecom regulatory body, private players can woo customers by offering variety of services and customise solutions for them. "We can offer a better pricing structure for large users," he said. Bharti plans to offer between 64 kbps to 2 mbps bandwidth for customers.

In Bangalore itself, around Rs 2 billion will be invested in the first phase. Services like call hunting number through which the mobile, office and home numbers will be dialled to trace the called party, voice mail services through which customer can access the mail from any part of the country, unique phone number etc will be made available. In Bangalore, the basic services are expected to be unveiled by November.

Bharti Enterprises recently received an equity investment of around $460 million from Singapore Telecom, Warburg Pincus, Asian Infrastructure Fund, International Finance Corporation and New York Life for its telecom ventures.

While Warburg Pincus and Singapore Telecom have pumped in around $200 million each, AIF, IFC and New York Life have committed $35 million, $20 million and $5 million respectively. The investments have been made into Bharti's telecom service provider company, Bharti Televentures.

With the latest infusion of funds, Singapore Telecom's total investments in Bharti Televentures has grown to $650 million and that of Warburg Pincus' to $300 million.

Bharti Group's turnover for 2000-01 was around Rs 13 billion, which is expected to grow to Rs 20 billion by 2001-02. It has around 800,000 cellular subscribers, around 1.6 million subscribers of its Internet services and 125,000 subscribers of its basic fixed line services.

Bharti Group has been issued letters of intent for basic telephony in eight states. It is also making forays into national long distance services through Bharti Telesonic.

The group has already committed to float an IPO worth around $200 million depending on the market conditions. The group has invested around $600 million in existing telecom ventures.

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