The Tata Group and Bharti Enterprises are in talks for a possible partnership involving their telecom, overseas cable and enterprise services, and direct-to-home TV businesses, The Economic Times reports, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. According to these sources, talks between Tata Group and Bharti Enterprises have revolved around a possible merger between unlisted Tata Teleservices and Tata Sky and the listed Tata Communications with Bharti Airtel, which includes its DTH arm.
A Tata Sons spokesperson declined to comment, while the Bharti Enterprises spokesperson did not respond to emails.
The potential merger would allow Bharti Airtel to close the gap with rival Idea-Vodafone, both in terms of numbers of subscribers as well as revenue market share, and also weather better the intense competition from new arrival Reliance Jio.
Airtel currently has around 280 million mobile phone users in India, while Tata Teleservices has around 48 million. Airtel would also get access to a network including 4G bandwidth in the 800 MHz band. For Tata, the merger would provide an opportunity to fold its loss-making telecom business into a bigger company and become minority investors.
