Bharti Airtel, the world's fourth largest telecom operator by subscribers, is reportedly in final talks to sell off its Sri Lankan operations to Abu Dhabi's Etisalat. The company has taken this decision as its subscribers have not grown in the past four quarters in the region, despite investing over $300 million since 2007, the unit continues to make losses.
The telecom operator has entered the Sri Lankan market in 2009 as the country's fifth operator, offers 2G, 3G and 3.5G services in the island nation across all the 25 districts and it has built a distributor network of 40,500 retailers. Etisalat is Sri Lanka's third-largest operator with 4.5 million subscribers and it will move up to the second spot if the deal goes through.
