The Department of Telecommunications (DoT), earlier today, cleared the merger of Bharti Airtel and Telenor India. As a next step, Airtel will begin integrating Telenor India’s operations across seven circles: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, UP (East), UP (West) and Assam. The transaction has received all the necessary regulatory & statutory approvals and did not face any hurdles post the merger announcement in March 2017, besides the bank statement requirement from DoT very recently. With the completion of this transaction, Airtel’s total mobile customer base in India now stands at over 330 million, further cementing its leadership position in the telecom market.
All the existing customers of Telenor India will now become a part of Airtel's network and can enjoy high-speed data, voice and content services of Airtel. The leading telecom operator also confirmed that all the customers will be transitioned seamlessly to the Airtel network and will continue to enjoy uninterrupted services with the same SIM card, same mobile number and same plan/pack benefits. If any of the Telenor customer facing issues with the network, they can approach Airtel's customer support by calling 121 or they can write to 121@airtel.com.
Gopal Vittal, MD & CEO (India & South Asia) said: “We welcome all Telenor customers to the Airtel family and look forward to delighting them with best-in-class products. The acquisition consolidates our market leadership, further strengthens our network portfolio in key markets and will add to shareholder value. We would like to thank all the concerned authorities and stakeholders for granting approvals to this transaction.”
Bharti Airtel will add 5 MHz to 7.2 MHz of Telenor’s spectrum (1800 band) in each of the seven circles. The addition of this fresh spectrum (total of 43.4 MHz) will enable Airtel to further expand network capacity across these markets and strengthen its network leadership. Airtel is also planning to step up the investments and aggressively expand its high-speed data network across the country over the coming year as part of Project Leap, which is the company's network transformation program.
For the unaware, Airtel and Telenor announced a merger last year in March 2017 as the Norway-based telco was not able to sustain the competitive Indian telecom market.
