Videocon To Partner With South African Telco MTN For GSM Business: Report
By Nikhil Pahwa - Thu 24 Apr 2008 02:16 AM PST
Electronic Goods major Videocon Industries is close to inking a deal with South African telecom co MTN Group as a partner for its telecom operations in India, reports Business Standard. Talks between Datacom Solutions, Videocons telecom company, and MTN are in the final stages, apparently. Both Datacom and MTN have declined to comment, and there’s nothing on how much stake is being diluted. Remember - Telecom has a foreign direct investment (FDI) limit of 74 percent.
Videocon had announced plans to spend Rs. 6000 crores on infrastructure. There were reports of Spanish telco Telephonica and AT&T (NYSE: T) being potential suitors for Videocon, but it’s surprising that Verizon (NYSE: VZ) is not a part of the plan. After all, Verizon and Videocon are partners for long distance telephony in India. More on Datacom here. One thing to bear in mind regarding Datacoms plans is that this ties in rather well with Videocons retail electronics business...and there were reports of the company bidding for Motorola’s handset business. These are interesting, fluid times in the telecom business in India…
