ET reports about an equity research report comparing Reliance Communication Ventures Ltd (RCoVL) and Bharti Airtel Ltd by JM Morgan Stanley and UBS Securities

The two global firms said that RCoVL had a higher average minute of usage (MOU) in the March 2006 quarter but a lower share of overall wireless subsciber additions and a lower average revenue per user (ARPU).

RCoVL has posted gross ARPU of Rs 375 for the March 2006 quarter, which was more than 15% lower than Bharti’s figure in the same quarter and represented a sequential decline of 8.5%. The minutes of usage are pegged at 532 minutes per month for RCoVL as compared to 431 for Bharti.

Bharti has a market capitalisation of Rs 79,809.84 crore as compared to Rs 39,244.14 crore of RCoVL.

The government seems unsure of the actual ownership of BPL’s mobile business, which was bought by Hutchison-Essar last year and has sought clarifications from it in this regard.

Following Hutch-Essar’s application for the legal merger of BPL Mobile Cellular Ltd and BPL Mobile Communications with it, the department of telecommunications has asked the BPL group about who actually owned these companies.

DoT has sent a series of letters to BPL about the actual owner of BPL Communications Ltd.

BPL Communications Ltd was the holding company for the group’s mobile business. It held a 74% stake in BPL Mobile Communications Ltd (which has operations in Mumbai) and 100% in BPL Mobile Cellular (which offers services in Maharashtra, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Kerala).

The DoT also said a company named Global Capital Ltd holds more than a 10% stake in BPL’s Mumbai operations and sought details of this ownership, including the promoters and shareholders of the company.

Source: Business Standard