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R.Y. Narayanan

Coimbatore , Nov. 17

The Centre's proposal to hike foreign direct investment (FDI) limit in telecom sector from 49 per cent to 74 per cent has received support from one of the largest private telecom players in the country — Bharti Enterprises. Mr Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Group Managing Director, said that this move was necessary for exponential growth in the sector. .

But for the present, Mr Mittal prefers to concentrate on consolidating his company's position in the telecom market in India and is not looking at overseas acquisition, unlike Reliance group and VSNL.

Interacting with the media in Coimbatore, Mr Mittal, said the number of mobile telephone subscribers has now grown to around 45 million in the country, overtaking landline subscribers. He expected this number to go up to 100 million in the next two years and reach 200 million in the next five years.

He estimated that the investment needed propel this growth would be around $25 billion- $30 billion. He felt that such a huge amount could not be mobilised from domestic sources alone and foreign investment was necessary if the telecom sector was to reach out to the rural markets.

On the Bridge Mobile alliance formed by AirTel in association with leading mobile operators in the Asia Pacific region, he was confident that the AirTel customers would be happy with the alliance since they would be part of the community with the leading edge of technology.

The Bharti Enterprises Chairman said there were six operators in India but felt that ``four is the right number for any market to behave in a rational manner.'' He said any fluctuation in pricing is not good for the market.

Apart from catering to the needs of the 43 million mobile telephony customers now, one has to be prepared to see 150 million new customers coming into the market in the next few years. For this, the industry needs to be viable and it has to raise capital and the equity market has to assess their business and reward them. In his view there should be a balance- `customer must enjoy your tariff and the industry must get some return on the investments'.

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