Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd is exploring the possibility of listing on the Nasdaq in 2004-05 and plans to invest Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion) during the current fiscal.
Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and managing director, Bharti Enterprises, said the telecommunications market is set to consolidate and by March 2004, only four players will be left.
Bharti apart, it could be Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd, Reliance Infocomm and either Tata or Hutchison, Mittal opined.
Mittal, on the move towards an unified licence, said, "We believe the government must look at all aspects of such a change so that nobody loses in the process. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India must ensure that nobody is worse following the unified licence."
Mittal expressed satisfaction over the company's performance in the recent past. "We have broken away from a difficult period. Our topline has consistently grown by 100 per cent in the last 10 to 12 years and the traffic base is also growing at three-digit rates."
The Bharti group is planning to invest Rs 2,000 crore during the current fiscal. Around 65 per cent of this investment is expected in the mobility business and the balance in fixed-line services.
In terms of topline revenue, mobile telephony services is expected to fetch 60 per cent and the rest will come from fixed-line services.
Mittal said the companies balance sheet was healthy with a 0.68 to 1 debt-equity ratio. This, he said, was despite the $350 million raised from the international debt market. "Even after covering the risk related to exchange rate fluctuations, the average cost of borrowing was only 5 per cent."
The new network operation centre inaugurated at Chennai today, according to company press release, is a full-function network brain that controls all network elements - switch, synchronous digital hierarchy, dense wave digital multiplexing, asynchronous transfer mode.
Mittal said the Chennai NOC along with the one in Delhi will be the backbone that would support the growth in IT and IT-enabled services sector in the country.
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