Bharti Airtel Ltd has planned for a medium-term U. S. dollar debt to raise funds for its proposed acquisition of Kuwait's Mobile Telecommunications Co.'s telecom assets in Africa.

The company was earlier believed to be planning for a dollar bridge loan. The company has arranged about $9 billion from various domestic and foreign banks.

Bharti Airtel is the largest mobile phone operator by subscribers in the country and plans to expand its low cost model to Africa as the competition and a price war leaves lower margin in the domestic market.

The loan will charge about 3% above the London interbank rate. According to the source, the company directly chooses long tern financing instead of usual way of going in for a bridge loan first, is because it was ready with the documentation from the failed MTN bid.

The company announced last week that it will discuss the deal with Kuwait's Mobile Telecommunications until March 25 to buy the African assets of Zain. The deal will not involve its assets in Morocco and Sudan.

This is third bid from the company to enter the African market after its two failed attempts at a merger with South Africa's MTN Group Ltd.

Bharti did not comment officially on the loan. According to a source the company is discussing with the rating agencies as the company think that taking the debt burden would affect the financial indicators for the company.

The Standard & Poor's has already placed the company in negative credit watch after it announced the bid. The agency said that this rating means it expects a significant deterioration in Bharti's cash flow protection measures along with weakness in business risks profile.