Orange and Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands) have opened discussions on Airtel’s subsidiaries in Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone.
The discussions centred on Orange taking over the businesses in the four countries.
For now, the talks are exploratory as there is no binding agreement, according to a statement issued by both companies.
Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators with sales of 39 billion euros in 2014 and 155,000 employees worldwide at 31 March 2015, including 98,000 employees in France.
Present in 29 countries, the Group has a total customer base of 247 million customers worldwide at 31 March 2015, including 188 million mobile customers and 16 million fixed broadband customers.
Orange is also a leading provider of global IT and telecommunication services to multinational companies, under the brand Orange Business Services.
Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands) BV is a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel Limited
Bharti Airtel Limited has operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the Company is the third largest mobile operator in the world by subscribers. It has over 328 million customers across its operations at the end of May 2015.
By Pita Ochai
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