BTRC to send Robi-Airtel merger proposal to telecoms ministry after scrutiny

Telecoms regulator BTRC has started scrutinising the merger application it has received from mobile phone operators Robi and Airtel.

The commission in a meeting on Wednesday decided to forward the merger proposal to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.

After the meeting, BTRC Secretary Md Sarwar Alam told bdnews24.com: “We have discussed the proposal from the two operators in detail.”

A BTRC official, requesting anonymity, told bdnews24.com that the commission paid special attention to the legal aspects of the proposal.

“We’ve checked if the employees of the two operators will face any problem after the merger,” he said.

He said the proposal would be sent to the Posts and Telecommunications Division now.

He also said it would take several months to get the final approval.

“After the approval by the Posts and Telecommunications Division, the two operators will have to go to the High Court’s bench on company matter. Their payment issues will be settled there. BTRC will give the final nod if no party has any objection,” he said.

In the letter seeking permission for the merger sent to the BTRC recently, the operators said Malaysia’s Axiata Group and NTT DoCoMo Inc of Japan would have 75 percent share and India’s Bharti Airtel would have the rest after the tie-up.

They started discussing the unification on Sep 9.

The operators in the letter said the code for Airtel numbers (016) would remain unchanged, but the merged operator would stop issuing numbers with that code after three years.

The letter said the subscribers would not face any problem because of the amalgamation. Rather they would get better services.

On Sep 9, the two operators said they were discussing possibilities of merging business operations.

They said the discussion for combining businesses of Robi Axiata Limited and Airtel Bangladesh Limited was at primary stage.

There were 128.7 million mobile-phone subscribers in Bangladesh until July, according to government data. Of them, Robi has 27.9 million subscribers and Airtel 9 million.

If the two operators merge, they will become the second largest operator in Bangladesh in terms of subscribers, overtaking Banglalink, owned by Egypt's Global Telecom, which has more than 32 million subscribers.

Axiata is one of the leading telecom companies in Asia with operations in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Singapore, and India.

In the second quarter of 2015, Robi announced it had an investment of Tk 155.8 billion in Bangladesh.

It is providing services through 8,119 sites, including 2,450 3.5G sites.

Axiata Group and its associate companies have over 260 million mobile subscribers in Asia. It earned 18.7 billion Malaysian ringgit last year.

Bharti Airtel ventured into Bangladesh in 2010 after acquiring 70 percent stake in Warid Telecom. Three years later, Bharti Airtel Holdings Limited, a subsidiary of Singapore-based Bharti Airtel, acquired the remaining 30 percent.

Currently, Airtel has the fourth-largest subscriber base in Bangladesh among six mobile operators.

Grameenphone has the largest subscriber base of 53.9 million, government data showed.