Barcelona : Bharti Airtel said consolidation in the country’s telecom sector will take place through a combination of acquisitions, spectrum trading and sharing and India will eventually have 5-6 mobile operators.
“There has to be some form of shakeout where you end up with five, may be six, operators. That will happen through a combination of three things – acquisitions, spectrum trading and sharing,” Bharti Airtel Joint Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (India Operations) Gopal Vittal told PTI. He said consolidation is needed because spectrum holding of individual operators is very small due to which costs are high.
Airtel, India’s largest telecom company, recently bought Mumbai-based Loop Mobile for about Rs 700 crore and was among the eight companies that bid for spectrum this month.
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