Vodafone Idea: No plan to acquire Voda Idea, says Verizon exec

CHENNAI: Amid reports that US telecom giant Verizon is among top suitors to acquire cash-strapped Vodafone Idea, a global Verizon official denied such plans on Tuesday.
“We are not buying Vodafone, definitely not…It’s not a question of regulatory [climate] but of opportunity. If the US wasn’t big enough or wasn’t growing, we would have looked [at India]. There is opportunity for us [consumer division] to grow further in the US and thus we are staying focused and doubling down capital committments there,” Sowmyanarayan Sampath, CEO, Verizon Consumer Group, said in a media interaction here.
Vodafone Idea also denied that it was in talks with Verizon, Amazon, or Elon Musk-owned Starlink on acquisition. “India is a critical part of our growth plans…It is about capabilities and accessing talent pools we can’t access anywhere else in the world,” he added.
Verizon is the largest consumer telecom player in the world by subscriber count, and recorded consolidated revenue of $32.6 billion for the quarter ended June 2023. Consumer business revenue was $24.6 billion.