Airtel cancels the Loop Mobile deal
The leading Indian telecom operator Airtel has cancelled its plan of acquiring business and assets of Loop Mobile a Mumbai based company. The deal which costs around Rs 700 crore was yet to get clearance from DoT.
As reported by PTI, the Loop Mobile spokesperson said, “Loop Mobile and Bharti applied to DoT for approval of the business transfer in March 2014. The approval for the transaction is still awaited from the relevant authorities and as a result Bharti Airtel has withdrawn from the proposed transaction causing huge loss to the company.” The deal awaited clearance from DoT as the deal estimates that Loop Mobile and its sister concern Loop Telecom owe about Rs 808 crore in spectrum and other charges to the government.
The permit of Loop mobiles is set to expire on 29 November, 2014 and the company did not purchased any spectrum in the last held auctions which was necessary to continue with the services. The deal of Airtel and Loop Mobile was signed in February this year.
As per the agreement, the 3 million subscribers of Loop Mobiles were supposed to join Airtel after the deal. But now the migration of subscribers will not take place. However, Airtel has not commented anything about the issue.
