www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Bangladesh’s fourth largest mobile phone operator Warid  is set to sell 70% stake in its company from its Abu Dhabi-based owners and regulators to one of the India’s leading telco Bharti Airtel. An approval
from the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission for the sale has been sought by the Dhabi Group, which fully owns Warid.

With the latest move, Airtel becomes the largest foreign operator to make inroads into Bangladesh mobile phone market. According to BTRC chairman Zia Ahmed, Bharti initially intended to invest 300 million dollars.

Warid was launched in 2007 and had three million subscribers at the end of October. The subscription is predicted to cross 100 million marks by 2015 by the industry experts.

Last year Japan’s NTT DoCoMo Inc bought 30 percent stake in operator AKTEL. Earlier, in the year 2004, Egyptian Orascom took over Sheba and in 2005 Singapore based Singtel bought 45 percent stake in Bangladesh Telecom.