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New Delhi, July 15: Reliance Communications (R-Com), which has less than a week to offer a “suitable deal” to South African telecom firm MTN, may have to tackle competitive bids from global suitors such as China Mobile, UAE-based Etisalat and France Telecom.

Analysts said that MTN, which wants to avoid any legal dispute in India, might dump R-Com unless promoter Anil Ambani was able to resolve a claim of the right of first refusal on R-Com shares by his brother Mukesh, who runs Reliance Industries Ltd.

R-Com is believed to have several alternative plans to overcome the hurdle posed by Mukesh. However, these have to be finalised and accepted within July 21. Otherwise, MTN will be free to hold talks with other investors.

“True to its roving eye attitude, the South African mobile firm may scout for new suitors once the deadline for exclusivity between Reliance and MTN ends on July 21,” an analyst said.

In May, Reliance and MTN had entered into 45 days of exclusive negotiations to create a combined entity. On June 9, the merger talks were extended by two weeks.

Chinese telecom companies are stronger financially, have government backing and have some of the largest subscriber bases in the world, making them worthy suitors, analysts said. China Mobile, with more than 300 million subscribers, is the world’s largest mobile phone company in terms of subscribers.

Analysts also do not rule out possible interest from Russia, though no bidders have yet emerged. Russia’s three top cellular companies — VimpelCom, Mobile TeleSystems and Megaphone — are generating excess cash that they cannot invest in their saturated domestic market.

Besides expanding to the Commonwealth of Independent States countries, the companies are pushing into countries where Russia, as the USSR, had considerable influence during the Cold War. These include some African countries.

In May this year, Dubai-based Emirates Telecommunications (Etisalat) had also announced its plans to buy MTN as it seeks to boost revenues from Africa.

Reports have also suggested that MTN has sounded out Bharti Airtel for reviving merger talks if it fails to agree to a deal with Reliance Communications.