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Bharti Airtel acquires 70% of Bangladesh’s Warid Telecom

Categories: General
By: , IntoMobile
Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 3:10 AM

Bharti AirtelWe did expect this to happen – India’s Bharti Airtel has confirmed plans to buy a 70% stake in Bangladesh’s Warid Telecom, currently a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dhabi Group. As part of the agreement, Bharti will make a fresh investment of $300 million to expand Warid’s operations and will have management and board control of the company. This in turn will drive Warid’s value to $1 billion. Dhabi Group will continue as a strategic partner, retaining 30% of the operator.

Commenting on the announcement, Bharti Airtel’s Chairman and Managing Director, Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal, said: “This landmark deal underlines our intent to further expand our operations to international markets where we can implant our unique business model and offer quality and affordable telecom services. At the same time, it is a symbol of the growing economic cooperation between the South Asian countries and we would like to thank the Government of India and Bangladesh for their support and encouragement.”

And for the record, this is Bharti’s second operation outside of India — they’ve been operating a mobile network in Sri Lanka, since January 2009.

[Via: CellularNews]

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Dusan Belic

Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.