AFP

AS THE orchestra of chirrups and pings in any public place in the rich world attests, the market for mobile phones in developed countries is saturated—and even in some developing ones opportunities for growth are running short. So big mobile operators, including those from emerging economies, are looking for growth wherever it can be found. Bharti Airtel, the biggest Indian operator when measured by subscribers, said on Monday February 15th that it is hoping to expand beyond one of the world's fastest growing markets and into another. It is in talks with Zain, a Kuwaiti telecoms company, to buy its sub-Saharan assets for $10.7 billion and bring together African and Indian mobile-phone expertise.

Bharti has tried to move into Africa before. Two previous efforts to merge with South Africa's MTN fell through, the latest in September last year. The deal was blocked by South Africa's government, which was unwilling to let go of a national champion. If the new deal proceeds Bharti should find a warmer welcome in the 15 countries, including Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania, where Zain provides mobile phones to some 42m customers.

Although the mobile-phone business is still booming in India, growth there is slowing. Competition, not least from operators based in the rich world, has brought the number of mobile operators in the country to 12 and a brutal price war is under way. Recent new arrivals include Norway's Telenor and Japan's NTTDoCoMo. Penetration rates in India are at around 50% compared with 40% in much of Africa. Bharti sees a chance to stake a claim in the fastest growing region in the world and to do so profitably.

Zain has fared badly in Africa along with other Middle Eastern operators perhaps because their home turf has been heavily regulated. Most acted as comfortable monopolists until only recently. Bharti on the other hand has a good deal of experience in wringing out profits in a poor country where competition is growing. Africa merely adds more diversity and the potential for political instability to the challenge. It helps, too, that Bharti brings expertise of running low-cost operations in markets where consumers have very low incomes. It does this by sharing infrastructure and outsourcing most operations such as IT and running networks, leaving the risk of expanding to meet the needs of subscribers to others while it concentrates on marketing and strategy. And Bharti's size and clout should allow it to pay much less than Zain for network towers and the like in Africa.

Bharti's ability to concentrate on its customers should yield rewards in Africa, where innovations to bring down costs to customers have already helped to boost profits of other firms. MTN, for example, pioneered dynamic tariffs that charge users to make calls according to how many other callers are using a network at a given time. And Zain's own scheme of “borderless roaming” lets customers move between Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and make calls without incurring disproportionate charges.

Africans are also in the vanguard of providing mobile money. M-PESA, a successful service available in Kenya through Safaricom, lets mobile users transfer cash using their phones. Zain has a mobile-money service, Zap, that operates in several African markets that should give Bharti useful experience and a head start if it is taken up as enthusiastically elsewhere.

Creating a transcontinental wireless operator seems to make sense. But critics of the proposed deal worry that Bharti may have over-bid for Zain's African businesses. Bharti's investors seem to agree: the firm's shares fell sharply on Monday when news of discussions with Zain emerged. The growing confidence of India's corporate bosses in the past decade has resulted in a shopping spree for foreign assets that has not always been governed by sound business logic, such as Tata's purchase of Jaguar Land Rover in 2008. And Vivendi, the French media and telecoms giant, broke off talks in July with Zain about acquiring these assets for around the same price, citing fears about “profitability and financial discipline”. But if Bharti applies the same techniques to Africa that made it so successful in India it seems destined to bring mobile phones to ever more of the world's poorest people.