Loop Mobile, and Airtel have called off a Rs7bn deal which envisaged transfer of Loop's some assets and principally its subscriber base to Airtel. Loop is an incumbent mobile operator in Mumbai and its 20-yr license expired in Oct/14.
Mumbai is 6.3% of the Indian telecom market of $27bn. The revenue share are Vodafone (36%), Bharti (22%), Loop (5%). When the deal was signed, Loop had around 3m subscribers (9.5% marketshare) in Mumbai Since Loop is the incumbent operator, the subscriber base have higher-than- average ARPU. Bharti has 4.5m subscriber base in Mumbai and an inclusion of Loop?s base would have helped it to close the gap with Vodafone.
Airtel Spectrum in Mumbai
Airtel acquired 5Mhz of spectrum in the 900Mhz band in the Feb/14 auction. In addition, it has around 9.8Mhz of spectrum in 1800Mhz band and 5Mhz of spectrum in 3G (2300Mhz band).
