FACTBOX: Bharti outlook after MTN talks fail

(Reuters) - India's Bharti Airtel (BRTI.BO) said on Wednesday it and South Africa's MTN (MTNJ.J) had called off talks for a planned tie-up, but said it would continue to look for international expansion opportunities.

Here are some facts about why India's top mobile operator needs to expand overseas and the possible ways forward.

* Bharti is the market leader in India, the world's fastest-growing market and the second-largest market for mobile services. It has nearly a quarter of India's total mobile subscriber base.

* Bharti is keen to expand as returns from the Indian market are likely to slow. At end-August, about 40 percent of India's 1.1 billion-plus population had mobile phones, and more than 10 million users are signing up every month.

* Subscriber growth is expected to slow as more of the population gets phones. Increasing competition in the already-crowded market has started taking its toll on revenue and margins of telecom firms.

* Bharti will keep looking to expand overseas, but may aim for smaller firms than MTN. Bankers say one possibility could be Kuwaiti telecoms firm ZAIN (ZAIN.KW), whose shareholders are selling a 46 percent stake.

* "Bharti wanted to expand their footprint globally, but that just doesn't seem to be happening right now," said Deven Choksey, the chief executive of K.R. Choksey Shares and Securities.

"But this is not the end of the story. They probably have to look at something smaller than MTN or some other region to enter."

* Bharti could go back to talks with MTN if the South African government eases its rules.

*"I think there are very few opportunities of the size, and more importantly scale of MTN globally at this point in time," Shubham Majumder, telecom analyst at Macquarie, told CNBC TV18.

"I think it would be much smaller businesses and footprints that are up for grabs in the global emerging markets telecoms space from here on for Bharti."

* Bharti is reportedly eyeing Millicom's MICC.O assets in Sri Lanka, where it already has mobile operations, but analysts expect that such a small acquisition would not satisfy Bharti, Some expect it to look at telecom infrastructure assets.

* The collapse of the talks means Bharti will not have to take on debt, and its strong cash position will have it well placed for local expansion and an upcoming 3G spectrum auction in India.

(Reporting by Indian equities team; Editing by John Mair)