VODAFONE MUST be watching events in India and South Africa closely because there are strong rumours a tie-up between Africa's biggest mobile operator, MTN, and India's Bharti Telecom is on the cards.

The move would be a double whammy for Vodafone. Firstly, it would create a new force in the mobile sector which it is generally estimated would create the world's sixth largest cellular operator.

MTN has 68 million subscribers and Bharti some 62 million. That's still smaller than America Movil whose base in Latin America and the Caribbean encompasses some 150 million plus subscribers.

The second blow would be that Africa and India are widely recognised as the cellular markets most likely to experience significant growth in subscriber figures.

Vodafone, has of course, bought Hutch from Essar in India to take full advantage of that market while in South Africa its efforts to utilise Vodacom as a springboard to launch into other African markets have so far stalled.

It's not all gloom and doom, however. At one point in time, Vodafone had an almost 10 per cent stake in Bharti. After the Essar acquisition, this dropped back to 4.4 per cent – mainly because the holding gives Vodafone no direct influence over the management of Bharti.

Plus, size doesn't always matter. Vodafone is still the world's leading mobile operator by revenue even though China Mobile has significantly more subscribers. µ