**Indian telecommunications firm Bharti Airtel says it has agreed to buy about 70% of Warid Telecom, the fourth largest mobile company in Bangladesh.**Bharti Airtel, India’s leading mobile phone service provider, will make an investment of $300m in Warid, and will control the company’s management.
The company has twice failed to merge with South Africa’s MTN Group.
It wants to diversify because of intensifying competition and a price war in India.
The telecom regulatory authority in Bangladesh gave its approval to the proposal deal earlier this month.
Bharti Airtel will be the first Indian telecom operator to enter Bangladesh’s highly competitive mobile market, one of the fastest growing in the world.
It already has more than 50 million subscribers and the number is expected to double by 2015.
The BBC’s Anbarasan Ethirajan in Dhaka says that Bharti Airtel faces stiff competition from market leaders such as the Bangladesh-Norway joint venture Grameenphone, which has more than 40% of the market share.
Mobile phones have become popular in Bangladesh mainly because the networks cover virtually the entire country and call rates are among the cheapest in the world.
Bharti Airtel hopes that the introduction of additional services like banking and money transfers will attract new customers and boost revenue.