China Mobile Might Tie Up With Airtel And Vodafone-Idea For Indian Market: Report

China Mobile, the largest mobile operator of China, is reportedly planning to foray into India. The company held discussions with two the telecom operators for developing cloud networks in the country.

"The top executives of China Mobile met senior management of Bharti Airtel and Vodafone -Idea separately in December. China Mobile is interested in the Indian market and wants to come as a holding company with either of these two companies or even both," a person aware of the matter was quoted by livemint.

According to the report, China Mobile is looking for holding company structure, which can control the policies of the other company. This is somehow similar to Singtel in Airtel.

"China Mobile has grown the cloud space in its home market and is now scouting for investment opportunities overseas. It has initially proposed a structure which is similar to what Singtel has with Airtel, but for growing the cloud services market here," Mint quoted the same person.

The Business Daily also cited that Bharti Telecom is holding 41 percent share in Bharti Airtel, while Singtel has a 48 percent stake in Bharti Telecom. Besides, it (Singtel) has a 35 percent stake in Bharti Airtel. However, there is no official announcement by China Mobile and Bharti Airtel. On the other hand, Vodafone-Idea refuses to comment on the same.

Airtel is already offering its cloud services in India and now it is planning to add 10 more data centers in the country. On the other hand, Vodafone-Idea has announced its partnership with Microsoft, so that it can adopt cloud-based applications.

Ever since Reliance Jio has entered the sector all telecom operators are looking for new ways to sustain in the market. In fact, Jio has forced many operators to shut their operations from India. On top of that, both Vodafone and Idea merged their operations to give a tough fight to Reliance Jio.