(Bloomberg) -- Emirates Telecommunications Corp., the United Arab Emirates’s largest phone company by market value, received offers from Vodacom Group Ltd. and Bharti Airtel Ltd. to acquire its controlling stake in Zanzibar Telecom Ltd., according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

The Zantel unit, which is Tanzania’s largest Internet provider and is 65 percent owned by Etisalat, has a valuation of about $300 million, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. Dar es Salaam-based Zantel also attracted a bid from Millicom International Cellular SA, the person said.
Representatives for Vodacom’s controlling shareholder Vodafone Group Plc, New Delhi-based Bharti, Luxembourg-based Millicom and Abu Dhabi-based Etisalat declined to comment.
Zantel would give a buyer access to spectrum in Tanzania, helping it cope with growing demand for mobile data. About 57 percent of people in Tanzania had wireless access in 2012, compared with a ratio of more than 71 percent in neighboring Kenya, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In South Africa there are more mobile-phone accounts than people.
Vodacom is Tanzania’s largest wireless carrier with 11.3 million subscribers, while Zantel ranks fourth with 1.8 million users as of September, according to the country’s communications regulator. Meeco International of Tanzania owns 17 percent of Zantel and the government of Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous nation in a political union with Tanzania, holds 18 percent, according to the carrier’s website.
Bharti fell 3.5 percent to 380.25 rupees, the steepest decline in a month, at 12:54 p.m. in Mumbai. Vodacom added 0.3 percent to 136.92 rand in Johannesburg. Etisalat was little changed at 11.20 dirhams in Abu Dhabi. Millicom lost 0.2 percent to 534 kronor in Stockholm yesterday.
To contact the reporters on this story: Christopher Spillane in Johannesburg at cspillane3@bloomberg.net; Dinesh Nair in London at dnair5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong at kwong11@bloomberg.net; Aaron Kirchfeld at akirchfeld@bloomberg.net