BOAO, China, April 10, (RTRS): Leading Indian telecommunications carrier Bharti Airtel will work with its existing equipment suppliers when it builds its 3G mobile network following a long-delayed auction, a top executive said.
Rajan Bharti Mittal, a director on the company’s board, also said he saw no regulatory obstacles to Bharti Airtel’s pending $9 billion purchase of the African assets of Kuwait’s Zain , which would make Bharti one of world’s top five mobile companies by subscribers.
On Friday, India kicked of its long-delayed 3G spectrum auction in which nine carriers are vying for licenses to build third-generation (3G) mobile networks in parts or all of India, touching off a multi-billion-dollar spending spree by the likes of Bharti and Reliance Communications.
“We have our vendor partners, as you know,” Mittal, sibling of Bharti Airtel’s billionaire founder Sunil Bharti Mittal, told Reuters in an interview on Saturday, on the sidelines of the Boao Forum on southern China’s Hainan island.
Mittal, who is also managing director of the telecom operator’s parent, Bharti Enterprises, named Sweden’s Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks as two of Bharti Airtel’s partners.
Ericsson said in March that it had won a $1.3 billion network expansion contract to upgrade Bharti Airtel’s GSM network, while Nokia Siemens in February won a $700 million deal from Bharti.
“For 3G, we will go back to existing relationships and we will have to figure it out,” Mittal said.
“We always have and we like to maintain”, he said, referring to relationships with existing vendors.
India’s spectrum auction is expected to take about two weeks to complete, but companies will be allotted spectrum by September, meaning commercial launches of premium services such as faster Internet on mobile phones and video calling will be possible only next year.
Bharti Airtel earlier said it would be able to launch 3G services within six to eight months of receiving spectrum allocation.
“We are quite ready as a company to start the roll out if we have the spectrum,” Mittal said on Saturday. “As the younger generation is getting much more on the data, 3G will help in us bring that (to them).”
Data services account for just over 10 percent of revenue for Indian telecoms providers, according to researcher Gartner, but Bharti Airtel is betting on increased revenue from services such as mobile commerce, as voice prices fall sharply.
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KUWAIT: Zain Group has decreed that its Zain Iraq mobile operation will be under the direct supervision of Mr. Nabeel Bin Salamah, Group CEO and has assigned former Zain Iraq CEO,  Mr Ali Al Dahwi to act as a special advisor on Iraq operation affairs for Zain Group.
In a statement, Zain Group announced saturday that this decree was undertaken on the basis of the professional requisites of the Group and it is a normal corporate procedure that corresponds to companies’ required future development. From the outset, Zain-Iraq, thanks to Ali Al Dahwi, whose extensive public relations have paved the way for Zain to exist in all Iraqi walks of life, has realized great achievements.
Zain Group also confirmed that the  current change, of course, does not preclude Zain Iraq from following suit all subtle steps envisioned by Al Dahwi while he was active in position to run Zain Iraq whose customers proudly reached 11 million and whose revenues are huge — a fact that has placed it on top of the Group operators.
Accordingly, Mr. Barrak Al Sabeeh has been nominated to be representative of Mr. Bin Salamah in managing the company at the present time. In the same respect, Mr. Wael Ghanayem, Zain-Iraq CFO, effective 7th April 2010 was assigned to be acting CEO in addition to his job-title until a new CEO is officially assigned.
With these changes, Zain Group believes that Zain-Iraq will continue to be a pioneering company that undermines all difficulties that may arise due to the changing situations in Iraq. It will proceed on to give the best example of lucrative and successful foreign investment at the service of all Iraqi people.