Bharti Airtel down 2% on 4G competition fears

Telecom stocks were on sellers' radar on Tuesday on fears of increased competition after the telecom commission allowed 4G service providers to offer voice services by paying Rs 1,658 crore. This move could benefit Reliance Infotel, Trikona and Bharti.

It was a bumper broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum auction, which took place in 2010, but not many players rolled out services. There are one or two circles in which Bharti has rolled out services. We are yet to see Reliance Infotel, which is the largest BWA spectrum holder, to offer services in any region.

It is a data services at very high speed and also offers voice services like normal mobile operators. The biggest beneficiary of this is going to be Reliance Infotel, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries that fell over 1 percent.

According to media reports, if Infotel Broadband agrees to pay the entry fee, then competition will intensify in the voice space which could trigger another round of tariff war.

At 12:33 hours IST, Bharti Airtel dropped over 2 percent to Rs 307.30 while Reliance Communications and Idea Cellular were down 1.5 percent.