Hutchison extends Indian footprint
(CNN) -- Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa's Indian mobile phone joint venture Hutchison Essar will pay about 16 billion rupees ($350 million) for another 1.12 million subscribers.
Hutchison Essar said it would buy the regional Indian operator, Aircel and Aircel Cellular, from Sterling Infotech.
While terms of the deal were not disclosed, Indian media reports over the weekend said Hutchison was paying 12 billion rupees plus 4 billion rupees in assumed Aircel debt.
Aircel operates GSM 900 mobile services in the southern city of Chennai (formerly Madras) and the state of Tamil Nadu.
If the deal wins regulatory approval, Hutchison Essar's subscriber numbers will rise to 6.71 million, making it the third largest mobile phone operator in India behind Reliance Infocomm and Bharti TeleVentures.
Bharti is held 28 percent by Southeast Asia's biggest phone company, Singapore Telecommunications.
Hutchison said that since entering the Indian telecommunications market in 1994, it had grown from a single operation in Mumbai to what would now be 14 licence areas.
Essar Group vice chairman Ravi Ruia said Essar's joint venture with Hutchison dated back four years and he was delighted to "extend it to a larger footprint" .
Earlier this month, handset maker Nokia said it had won a contract to supply GSM equipment to nine of Hutchison's license areas.
