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Kripa Raman

"Telecom companies are at any time always in talks with several other telecom companies for all kinds of alliances," said a senior official associated with the Tata group.

Mumbai , July1

TATA Teleservices Ltd has been holding talks with SK Telecom (South Korea) on stake dilution in favour of the latter.

A delegation of SKT officials is in the city in this regard and the talks are at a fairly advanced stage, sources said.

It is believed that TTSL could concede a stake of up to 26 per cent to "the right" foreign partner.

The company has, over the last year or so, had talks with a couple of other overseas telecom outfits.

It is not known what valuation TTSL expects to fetch for itself.

Funds, apparently, is not the primary objective of stake dilution for TTSL.

The company has tied up debts that will see it through the next calendar year too, said sources, and an equity of over Rs 4,000 crore is of course in place.

Tata Power has about 35 per cent stake in the company, with VSNL too holding a small stake. (The Chairman of the Tata group has often publicly stated that VSNL and TTSL will ultimately be merged).

If TTSL does dilute a stake in favour of a foreign telecom operator, it would be more for technology know-how and systems, said the sources.

And Korea is among the biggest and most advanced CDMA markets in the world.

TTSL, it might be recalled, recently appointed a foreign expatriate, Mr Darryl Greene, as CEO. Mr Greene comes from Vodafone KK Japan, where he was President & CEO.

TTSL has a 20-circle footprint in the country; operations in many of these circles have just been rolled out and the company is just about in a position to truly compete with its more aggressive and proactive rival Reliance Infocomm, which started at the outset itself with a near pan-India footprint.

TTSL has a listed subsidiary in Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Ltd. TTML too has a fairly new appointee Managing Director in Mr Charles Anthony, who also has a lot of overseas experience.

In particular, TTSL will now accelerate the rollout of its various operations, when its biggest rival CDMA player Reliance Infocomm would be a wee bit busy recouping from the Reliance group reorganisation that is happening.

"Telecom companies are at any time always in talks with several other telecom companies for all kinds of alliances," said a senior official associated with the Tata group who refused further comment on the issue.

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