Vodafone Group PLC has invested 477 billion rupees (US$7.2 billion) in its India unit, bolstering the local carrier’s finances as it prepares to go public amid rising competition and a pending airwaves auction.
Vodafone India, which received the infusion during the first fiscal half, plans to use the funds to expand its network and participate in the auction for spectrum that can be used for 4G services, the carrier said in a statement.
About US$3 billion was a conversion of debt into equity, the Economic Times reported on Wednesday.
Photo: Reuters
A Vodafone spokesman had no immediate comment on the structure of the investment.
The investment gives Vodafone India more firepower in the crowded market, weeks after billionaire Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, began operating his mobile-phone carrier Jio by offering free phone calls. That has put pressure on existing operators in a market that already offers some of the world’s lowest tariffs.
India is also planning its biggest sale of spectrum, seeking to raise 5.6 trillion rupees by selling airwaves, as carriers gear up to expand high-speed mobile Internet services.
“The investment by Vodafone in the Indian unit is a positive move as it goes to show that they want to grow in the market, as well as demonstrates that the incumbents need to upgrade their technology and networks with the entry of Jio,” said Gaurang Shah, vice president at Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services Ltd in Mumbai. “This will also give confidence to potential investors and help spur interest in the IPO [initial public offering].”
Vodafone India has not said when it will go public. The company plans to raise as much as US$3 billion, people familiar with the matter said in April.
Vodafone, India’s second-largest wireless operator, may be the biggest spender at the auction by offering as much as 163 billion rupees for airwaves, according to Sanford C. Bernstein estimates.
The sale will help reduce buffering on videos and speed up downloads for India’s 1 billion-plus users who make up the world’s second-largest smartphone market. The government plans to sell airwaves in every band.
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
AT HIGH CAPACITY: Three-month order visibility on stable customer demand would push factory utilization to between 80 and 85 percent, Vanguard’s president said Foundry service provider Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) yesterday said it is unable to fully satisfy surging demand for chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) servers and data centers, amid an AI infrastructure investment boom that is crowding out production of less advanced chips. Vanguard is facing an “undersupply of chips” made using mature process technologies, due to strong demand for AI products and improving demand from customers in the commercial, industrial and auto sectors, which are digesting excess inventory to a healthier level, company chairman Fang Leuh (方略) told a virtual investors’ conference. However, Vanguard gave a more conservative view on
RSS