Earlier we shared that joint venture of Telenor and Unitech is going to see an end, as Telenor is to form a new company with new Indian partner to offer mobile services in the country.

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

Current laws do not allow the Norwegian telecom giant to have a 100% owned Indian subsidiary and hence Telenor is in talks with several Indian companies to tie the knot for the upcoming 2G auction.

Telenor is to take 74% of the new venture and rest 26% will be for Indian partners. Telenor is open to have more than one Indian partner.

Telenor also made it clear that it will control all the assets – the entire network, the towers, customers and the entire business operations of Uninor and ensures the smooth transition of the assets to new JV.

According to ET News, the possible Indian companies could be Sterlite Industries which is a subsidiary of London based metal group Vedanta Resources and Kolkata based Srei Infrastructure who owns tower company Viom Networks (earlier Tata-Quippo).

Sterlite Industries is one of the companies who applied in 2007-2008 to enter Indian mobile market but fails to do so during A. Raja’s regime. They are in metal, mining, oil and gas and have no problem to fund the joint venture with Telenor. It should be noted that Telenor clears that their new partner do not need to have any experience on telecom. With a partner like Sterlite, Telenor will not need to think about money.