Is it the end of Telenor India’s acarpous journey?

Telenor, the Norwegian multinational telecommunications company, which started its India operations in 2009, has said that it would not participate in the upcoming spectrum sale scheduled next month. With this, the Bærum-headquartered company has shown signs of taking an exit from India’s telecom industry.

It is "after thorough consideration, decided not to participate in the upcoming spectrum auction (in India), as we believe the proposed spectrum prices do not give an acceptable level of return," said a statement from Sigve Brekke, President and CEO of Telenor Group.

He added that the decision was not influenced by "the significant operational and financial improvement delivered by our Indian operation".

Earlier, Telenor had reported that it might be forced to leave India if it doesn’t secure additional capacity for its networks at a reasonable cost.

The Telenor CEO added that they would, however, continue their efforts to meet the demands of their customer and grow the business here in India.

The reason why Telenor could never attract Indian customers was the lack of 3G or 4G services, because it holds very limited data spectrum. Other than this, the company operates in just a few circles in the country.

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