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Vodafone senior executives met with the senior government official a day after the telecommunications department gave conditional approval to the ongoing merger of Vodafone's India operations with that of Idea Cellular.
"We are pleased that we have received the letter and look forward to a successful integration," Read told reporters after completing meetings with senior ministry officials on Tuesday.
When asked to comment on the progress of Vodafone India's merger with Idea, Colao said, "We are still optimistic about India." Read added that the Group was focused on the Indian market and that it would remain "invested" here.
In the conditional approval given by DoT on Monday, he requested an initial payment of Rs 7,268 crore, which is divided between a bank guarantee of Rs 3,342 crore to cover what the Idea owes due to Single spectrum royalties and money of Rs 3.926 crore that Vodafone has to market price for non-auctioned waves.
However, the executives did not comment on whether Vodafone India will pay the demand raised by the government or challenge it in court.
Among other conditions, Idea must replace Vodafone's bank guarantees of a value of Rs 6,452 crore held by DoT with its own. This is because spectrum payments are coming due in the next year.
The merger will give birth to a new entity, Vodafone Idea Ltd., which will be the largest Indian carrier and should be better positioned to compete with Reliance Jio Infocomm and Bharti Airtel. On their own, Idea and Vodafone struggled to attack Jio and Airtel, widening their losses and losing revenues and subscriber market shares.
Together, Vodafone Idea will hold a 37.5% market share and 39% market share, or about 440 million subscribers, making it a stronger entity.
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