Acquiring Tikona’s spectrum to be value accretive for Bharti Airtel: PhillipCapital

In a bid to increase its 4G coverage across India, Bharti Airtel acquired Tikona Digital's 4G airwaves for Rs 1,600 crore to take on Reliance Jio Infocomm as well as the Vodafone-Idea Cellular.

With the entry of Reliance Jio, the telecom industry has seen some consolidation, which would surely benefit the consumers but will it benefit the companies is the big question.

Telecom analyst Naveen Kulkarni of PhillipCapital said Bharti already has lot of business efficiencies, and have created spectrum capacity, so it remains a straight forward player compared to Idea Cellular. Moreover, acquiring Tikona’s spectrum assets is a good strategy and value accretive for Bharti, he added.

Once the Idea-Vodafone merger goes through no doubt it will be a larger player but it also depends on how the synergies are harnessed and the timeline by when they will be realised.

All the consolidations and acquisitions happening in the industry show that we are moving towards a clear 3-4 player market  - Bharti, Voda-Idea and Reliance Jio etc.

Disclaimer: Reliance Jio is a part of Reliance Industries that  owns Network 18 Media & moneycontrol.com