UPDATE: Wipro, Telenor Open To Extending IT Partnership Beyond India

NEW DELHI (Dow Jones)--Wipro Ltd. (WIT) and Norway's Telenor ASA (TEL.OS) said Monday they are open to extending their existing information technology partnership in India to other Asian countries, as both companies seek to leverage the benefits of a deal that was signed more than two years ago.

The Norwegian mobile telephony company is looking to capitalize on the outsourcing business model to cut costs and as it seeks to expand in Asia for growth. For Wipro, the opportunity comes at a time when it is facing a tough operating environment in the telecommunications business, which is yet to recover from the economic slowdown of 2008.

"We are satisfied with the IT outsourcing arrangement in India, and if Wipro is interested in expanding this relationship into other Telenor companies in Asia, we would be open to explore," Sigve Brekke, Telenor's executive vice president and head of Asian operations, said in an e-mailed statement. Telenor declined to elaborate.

In a separate e-mailed statement, the Indian company said that there is an opportunity for both Wipro and Telenor to leverage the partnership in India for "mutual business gains." Wipro said it is open to replicating the cost efficiencies achieved for Telenor in India in other parts of the world.

Wipro, India's third-largest publicly traded software services company, provides services to Telenor's local telecom joint venture--Unitech Wireless Ltd.--under a nine-year contract signed in May 2009.

Expanding the partnership with Telenor may be an added fillip to the Indian company, which is rebounding from a business restructuring last year aimed at taking its technology services division back to the fast pace of growth it had been recording before the slowdown hit the global economy in 2008.

Telenor provides mobile-phone services in 11 countries in the Nordic region, Central and Eastern Europe and Asia. It also has a 31.67% economic interest in VimpelCom Ltd., a phone services provider in 19 countries.

Telenor's Bangladesh unit Grameenphone Ltd. has 35.25 million users, while its Malaysia unit DiGi.com Bhd had 9.9 million users at the end of September 2011. Its Thai unit Total Access Communication PCL had 22.86 million subscribers, and its Pakistan unit had 27.31 million.

-By R. Jai Krishna and Dhanya Ann Thoppil, Dow Jones Newswires; +91-9886929464; dhanya.thoppil@dowjones.com

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