Business Standard
Bharti Airtel, this country’s largest mobile telecom carrier by subscriber base, on Tuesday said it had signed an agreement to buy Warid Telecom Uganda. This is expected to help raise its customer base in that country by about 60 per cent.
With the deal, Bharti will have 7.4 million subscribers in Uganda, coming close to the the segment leader, MTN, which had 7.7 million customers till the quarter ending December 2012. Warid, the third largest, had 2.8 mn, while Bharti had 4.6 mn. After the deal, Bharti would have a market share of 39 per cent in Uganda.
However, the average revenue per user (Arpu) is very low, at less than $4 as of end-December 2012. Bharti’s Arpu in the entire African region was $6.2 in that quarter. Though a low Arpu market, Uganda would have 11.9 per cent of Bharti’s total customers in Africa.
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