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Bharti Teletech is carved out

As part of a big restructuring exercise, Bharti Telecom has hived off its factories manufacturing telephone handsets and other items into a new company called Bharti Teletech.

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At the same time, Bharti Telecom is holding talks for mergers and acquisitions in mobile telephony business.

Also, it is finalising plans to expand basic telecom services in Punjab, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh when the next round of bidding takes place later this year.

''Bharti Telecom will now become a holding company of Bharti Enterprises for all service ventures, contributing to about 90 per cent of its business by next year,'' said Chairman and Group Managing Director Sunil Bharti Mittal.

Bharti Telecom is 51 per cent owned by Bharti Enterprises, the apex holding company of the Bharti Group.

Bharti Global, a subsidiary of the group that has been registered in the UK, holds the remaining 49 per cent.

Mittal said the restructuring process to separate services and manufacturing operations of Bharti Enterprises began last year. The group provides cellular services in Delhi and Himachal Pradesh besides fixed line phone service in Madhya Pradesh under the brand name Airtel.

The new entity, Bharti Teletech, will have three operating units: Siemens Telecom, Bharti Dura-Line and Goa Telecom.

Siemens Telecom, a joint venture with Siemens AG of Germany, markets electronic push button phones, feature phones and the latest GSM cellular phones besides the Beetel range of basic corded and cordless phones.

Bharti Dura-Line, a joint venture with Dura-Line Corporation of the United States, manufactures and markets lubricated ducts for optical fibre systems.

The manufacturing facilities are located at Gurgaon, Ludhiana and Goa. Mittal said Bharti Teletech, including a 100 per cent subsidiary Goa Telecom, will have a combined net worth of Rs 760 million.

Bharti Telecom, the services division, will now have two operating arms: Bharti Tele-Ventures and Bharti Tele-Spatial. Under Bharti Tele-Ventures will be operations of Bharti Cellular that provides cellular services in Delhi and Himachal Pradesh besides those of Bharti Telenet that provides basic services in Madhya Pradesh.

The non-traditional businesses will operate under Bharti Tele-Ventures. This will comprise functions of Bharti BT, a joint venture with British Telecom for customised TDMA, V-SAT solutions and DAMA/PAMA services and those of Bharti BT Internet, a joint venture with BT for email, Web access, basic Web hosting and value added services such as intranets, virtual private networks, roaming, complex Web hosting and e-commerce services.

Meanwhile, Akhil Gupta, executive director and CEO of Bharti Tele-Ventures, said the sales turnover of Bharti Enterprises is likely to exceed Rs 7.5 billion during the current financial year, up from Rs 5 billion in 1998-99.

UNI

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