UK's New Call Telecom to invest Rs600 crore in Mumbai

UK-based telecom service provider New Call Telecom yesterday said it has earmarked a corpus of $100 million (Rs600 crore) to acquire mid-level broadband services providers in India over the next 18 months.

New Call is looking at acquiring four such companies in India, with announcements expected in the next few weeks, the company said in a statement.

Jerome Booth, chairman, New Call Telecom, said, ''The Indian National Telecom Policy 2012 has targeted 100-per cent tele-density and 600 million broadband connections by 2020.

"We are looking at strategic acquisitions to enable New Call Telecom to make strong organic growth in the fast growing Indian telecom market and establish a pan-India presence.''

Booth made the announcement through his private office, New Sparta on Tuesday.

''We have initially allocated $100 million for the purpose and are optimistic of further growth due to the depth of entrepreneurial talent in the telecom services space in India,'' he added.

The London-based New Call Telecom, which has more than 750,000 annual subscribers, was founded in 2010 when its chief executive Nigel Eastwood led a management buyout of the business from its US parent PTGi.

According to Eastwood, New Call Telecom has established a reputation of transparency in pricing, flexibility and innovative marketing techniques, establishing itself as the sixth-largest residential internet service provider in the UK.

''Our short term vision in India is to capture the massive opportunity that the telecom sector here presents surrounding data transit, usage manipulation, and streaming; where ever possible collaborating with other incumbent telecom operators efforts and generating completely new revenue streams in the sector in India by identifying synergies across a number of different existing businesses. The medium to long-term strategy involves looking at complimentary opportunities and building synergies around our different business areas involving data analytics and e-commerce, thus, developing a unified communications platform,'' Eastwood added.