Loop Mobile to close operations today
29 Nov 2014
Loop Mobile, Mumbai's oldest telecom operator, will shut down its operations across the metro on Saturday midnight after two decades of operations. The closure comes after the GSM operator's license expires on 29 November 2014, and the company's promoters were not looking at renewing it.
In February, Loop Mobile signed a memorandum of understanding with Bharti Airtel to sell its business assets and liabilities for about Rs700 crore (See: Bharti to buy Loop Mobile in Rs700-cr deal: report). Later in March, Loop Mobile and Bharti Airtel applied to Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for approval.
Bharti Airtel, the country's largest mobile operator by revenue and subscribers, was interested in acquiring Loop Mobile, eyeing its 3.2 million subscribers and about 2,100 telecom towers, in a bid to strengthen its presence in Mumbai.
Loop Mobile (formerly BPL Mobile) has the largest revenue generating customers in the country, and according to the deal Airtel was only looking at acquiring the user base of about 3.2 million.
On 5 November, Bharti Airtel called off its plans to acquire Loop Mobile on failure to get regulatory approvals (Airtel dumps Rs700 crore Loop Mobile deal as DoT sits on proposal).
Loop Mobile decided not to participate in the February 2014 spectrum auction as the conditions of auction forced it to bid for 900 MHz frequency spectrum which it held. The company opted out of the forced bidding as the 900 MHz resource was limited and no priority was being assigned to the incumbent operator, it had earlier said.
From February, since the acquisition was announced other operators in the circle were on a poaching frenzy to acquire the GSM operator's subscriber.
Loop Mobile users got a number of calls from Loop's ribals, inviting them to port out, in a move that would have enabled the users to retain their existing mobile numbers.
At the time of the deal, Loop Mobile had about 3.2 million users on a Home Location Register (database of permanent subscriber information) basis and about 1.5 million on a visitor location register (VLR) basis. The company's user base had fallen to about 1-1.2 million on a VLR basis, which is a more accurate indicator, according to media reports.
