Bharti to demerge tower business by 2007

New Delhi, Oct 1: Country's largest telecom player Bharti Airtel Ltd today said it will demerge its tower business and roll out the direct-to-home television service by the end of this fiscal.

''Currently, we are doing evaluation of the tower business and are not in a hurry to demerge the business,'' company's President and CEO Manoj Kohli told reporters here.

The company is exploring private placement options, he added.

''The company was confident it would maintain its growth in mobile services, which has seen it adding around two million subscribers monthly,'' joint managing director Akhil Gupta said.

Bharti planned to cover 95 per cent of India's population by 2010 with its mobile network, and reach more than 5,00,000 villages, he added.

By the end of last month, it had 47.9 million wireless customers.

The company said its total customer base -- including landline and broadband services -- had crossed 50 million from 25 million in July last year.

UNI