Can Uninor Sustain in IndiaFollowing the Supreme Court’s verdict to cancel 122 2G mobile licenses, Indian telecom market is going through jeopardy. STel and Cheers already shut down their services and asked their customers to opt for other operators via MNP; while Loop is ready to return the spectrum of 21 licenses. 

  • Make Telecom Talk My Trusted Source
  • Source of Google
  • Source of Google

And those are partially hit – Idea Cellular and Tata Tele filed a review petition on the ground that they applied a long before; Videocon is continuing its services as they are commercially available in few circles.

But the game is tricky for Uninor and MTS India who already invested a lot in the market and this judgement hit them worse than any operator. Foreign investers of MTS India – Sistema JSFC seeks their right via Bilateral Investment Treaty, which appears to be a strong case favoring Sistema.

In this situation Uninor is in critical condition. They planned to break even within 2013-2014 and this judgement hit them at a crucial time. Telenor, the majority foreign owner of Uninor has its investors agitated. Investors on Telenor do not like to invest more on this scam-striken Indian telecom market.

At this moment Telenor took a different approach, they flied Sigve Brekke, Head of Asian operations to India and started confidence building campaign as many employees are leaving the company. At the same time Uninor employees started campaigning for Uninor over social sites. They also published advertisements on leading dailies with ‘Continue to talk…’ tagline. Uninor is seemed to win the game by sympathy vote.While investors are reluctant to pour money in Indian operations does this strategy work for Telenor? Time will tell that!