By R. Jai Krishna
NEW DELHI--Telenor ASA (TEL.OS) has no immediate plans to seek
any new partners for its Indian operations, the Norwegian telecom
company's chief executive said Thursday.
"We have a partner, we have a structure, rest is speculation,"
Jon Fredrik Baksaas told reporters.
Bloomberg News, citing three people familiar with the matter,
recently reported that Telenor was in talks to merge its Indian
operations with India's Tata Teleservices Ltd.
Telenor's India unit, Telewings Communications Pvt. Ltd., got
bandwidth to offer mobile phone services in six of the country's 22
telecom services areas this month.
Telenor acquired the bandwidth after the Supreme Court of India
earlier this year revoked all the licenses of its previous local
joint venture, Unitech Wireless Ltd. The Norwegian company recently
ended its association with Unitech Ltd., its partner in Unitech
Wireless.
It later partnered with a local investor, Sudhir Valia, as
Indian rules limit foreign ownership in telecom companies at
74%.
Write to R Jaikrishna at krishna.jai@dowjones.com
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