India’s MTNL has denied that it plans to delist its shares in preparation for a merger with fellow state-run telco BSNL.
"As far as MTNL is concerned, no such proposal has been under consideration of the board/management," the company said in a National Stock Exchange (NSE) filing on Friday.
MTNL’s shares jumped more than 20% on Friday foll owing reports that the Indian government plans to delist the debt-ridden telco’s shares.
Anupam Shrivastava, managing director of BSNL, told CNBC-TV18 on Thursday that the government has set a deadline of 31 July for finalising the structure of a merger between MTNL and BSNL. Delisting MTNL’s shares from the NSE is one of the steps in that process, he said.
The government has for years sought to bring together the two operators, which have seen their mobile market shares eclipsed by their privately-owned rivals.
At the end of April, MTNL, which offers mobile services in Delhi and Mumbai, had 3.5 million subscribers, according to the Telecoms Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). By comparison, Bharti Airtel had 16 million customers in Delhi and Mumbai.
BSNL, which operates mobile networks in the 20 telecom circles where MTNL does not, had 77.8 million customers at the end of April, good enough for an 8% share of the market. MTNL’s market share stands at 0.36%.
Meanwhile, in a separate announcement, India’s Department of Telecommunication (DoT) confirmed that nationwide mobile number portability (MNP) came into effect Friday.
It means that mobile customers can keep their number should they choose to switch operator or remain with their current service provider but happen to move to a different telecom circle.
MNP within the same telecom circle has been available since 2011.
In November 2014, telcos were given six months to implement nationwide MNP. However, the deadline was pushed back two months to allow time for changes to be made to India’s national numbering plan (NNP) that removed the need for customers placing calls to another circle to prefix a mobile number with a zero or India’s country code, +91.
