Bharti Airtel has announced an agreement to acquire 49% interest in Qualcomm Asia Pacific’s (Qualcomm AP) India BWA entities. Under this Agreement, Bharti has made US$ 165 million approx investment to acquire Qualcomm AP’s India BWA licenses in Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana and Kerala. Qualcomm won BWA Spectrum in these circles in 2010 by paying about USD 1 billion approx to acquire it.
Bharti would acquire 26% equity interest equally held by Global Holding Corporation Private Limited and Tulip Telecom Limited, and the balance by subscription of fresh equity in those entities. They expect to complete ownership and financial responsibility for the entities by the end of 2014.
Airtel has already launched 4G LTE services in Kolkata and Bengaluru and plans to launch 4G services in Pune in Maharashtra and Chandigarh in Punjab in India soon. They also have 3G licences in 13 circles in India.
Qualcomm expects to provide technical assistance to Bharti in connection with network architecture and optimization, infrastructure and device testing, as well as continuing to develop and support the underlying technology and the LTE TDD ecosystem.