Bharti plans to invest $200 m in Sri Lanka

NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel, which had earlier bagged the licence to become Sri Lanka’s fifth GSM-based service provider, on Wednesday said it will launch second and third generation mobile services in the island nation by the end of the current fiscal and invest about $200 million there in the next five years.

“With mobile penetration of around 30% and growing at a rate of approximately 2 million mobile users per annum, we are excited about our entry into this market,” Bharti Airtel president (mobile services) Sanjay Kapoor said in a statement. “Since the company is currently setting up its operations, a major portion of the committed investment will be made during the next 12 -18 months,” the company statement added.

Bharti will have to compete with the Telekom Malaysia-owned Dialog Telecom (the largest operator in the country), Celltel Lanka (owned by Luxembourg-based service provider Millicom International Cellular), Hutchison (owned by Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecommunications) and Sri Lankan government-owned Mobitel.

Earlier, this year (May 15), Bharti had inked an agreement with Sri Lanka’s foreign investment promotion body to invest $150 million for rolling out mobile services in that country. Bharti had piped CDMA major Reliance Communications, Malaysia's Maxis Communications and Singapore Telecommunications to bag the Lanka licence.