RelTel to sell controlling stake
By Nisha Das | 09 Jun 2004
RelTel,
a Nigerian telecommunications company, wants to sell its
controlling stake to a strategic Indian telecom firm and
has roped in Mumbai-based merchant banking firm, Strategic
Capital Ventures Ltd, to find a partner.
"The similarities between Indian and Nigerian telecom
sector has prompted us to bring in an Indian telecom operator
with expertise in ramping up large-scale expansion projects
as our strategic partner. RelTel will offer controlling
stake, if we are getting a right proposal from India,"
Sunil Pathak, group managing director, RelTel said.
RelTel, which offers wireless telecom services based on the Code Division Multiple Access technology or CDMA has a subscriber base of 80,0000 in the African country and annual sales turnover of $40 million (over Rs 180 crores).
Currently, there are seven CDMA carriers operating in India , including the state-owned BSNL and MTNL, HFCL Infotel, Reliance Infocomm, Shyam Telelink, and Tata Teleservices. Reliance is the largest operator in India, capturing about 20 per cent of market share after it introduced CDMA-based services in the country in May last year.
Pathak
said that one of the criteria for the partner is in-depth
understanding of the telecom business and readiness to
raise funds for expanding the telecom operations in Nigeria,
which, he said, is on the verge of an explosion in terms
of subscriber base.
He said in Nigeria, GSM operators have captured 2.5 million
subscribers, while the CDMA-based technology is yet to
take off.
There are 12 telecom operators in Nigeria. The private
telephone operators In the country added around 1, 70,000
new lines during the last five years. Government-owned
Nigeria Telecommunications Ltd or NITEL is the largest
player with about 5,60,000 lines.
According to Pathak, Nigeria is close to India in structure
of society and economy. Like in India, private wireless
telecom industry took off with GSM services. CDMA operators
entered the market much later because of the high capital
expenditure.
"In India, however, due to superiority of technology,
CDMA has now picked up the pace with GSM services."
he added.
Terming India as a fast-growing wireless markets in the
world, the trade association CDMA Development Group or
CDG had said that CDMA base grew to about 9.3 million
users in March 2004.
The
group also said that the CDMA-based services were rapidly
expanding and capturing a significant market share in
India.
