Indian telephone operator Bharti Airtel buys Zain Afrique

22 February 2010

Indian telephone operator Bharti Airtel has acquired the African shares of Kuwaiti mobile telephone giant Zain for ten billion Dollars.

This means that Bharti will be taking on 40 million Zain customers in Africa, following acceptance of the offer last Sunday by the Zain Board of Directors.

The transaction relates to fifteen countries, with Morocco and Sudan not being included in the operation.

Bharti Airtel is offering subscriptions at low prices, which could mean an exponential development in subscriptions in Africa, where 40% of the population pay for their communications by the minute.

In addition to this, Zain are going to enter into co-operation with Sony Ericsson to deploy the very latest generation of mobile telephone, 4G.

This technology will allow users to achieve Internet speeds on their mobile phones comparable to those of ADSL on a computer.

Category: ICT