The Hindu : BPL Mobile achieves financial closure

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 25, 2003

Business

Business

BPL Mobile achieves financial closure

By Our Staff Correspondent

MUMBAI JULY 24. BPL Mobile Cellular, a joint venture between BPL Mobile and AT&T Wireless, offering GSM wireless services under the brand name BPL Mobile, has announced the achievement of financial closure.

One of the largest non-recourse debt financing project in the Indian telecom industry, the total project cost is valued at Rs. 3,248 crores.

The project is funded by an equity component of Rs. 1,489 crores from the promoters, BPL Communications and AT&T Wireless, and the balance by long-term debt of Rs. 1,759 crores.

Sandip Basu, Joint President & Group CFO, BPL Mobile, said, the company planned to touch the one million subscriber base mark in the current financial year and ramp up to 1.4 million by the end of the next financial year.

By March 2004, the company expects to generate Rs. 500 crores as revenue with an operating profit of Rs. 150 crores. Towards this end, the company was making significant investments on the network front by increasing its high capacity microwave backbone network to 7000 km.

The infrastructure would also be scaled to ten main switching centres (MSCs), 50 base station centres (BSCs) and 1000 cell sites across its network.

On the delay in the financial closure, Mr. Basu said, "In spite of the external factors including those beyond the management's control such as the change in ownership of foreign partner, delay of almost five years on the part of the lenders consortium led by ICICI Bank to conclude the financial deal, the management team of the company continued its thrust in several areas. which enabled the company to significantly improve the operating profit in the last couple of years".

The company has now tied up its long-term financing requirements.

The financial closure allows the company to make fresh investments to expand its network and further develop the market.

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