The Hindu Business Line : Bharti Airtel hits 50-m customer mark

What’s in store
There will be “massive thrust on rural expansion”.
The company is estimated to have 47.9 m wireless subscribers by Sept-end.
It will soon launch IPTV and DTH services.

Kamal Narang

50-m subscriber base: Mr Akhil Gupta (second left), Joint Managing Director, Bharti Airtel Ltd, and MD, Bharti Enterprises, with (from left) Mr Manoj Kohli, President & CEO, Bharti Airtel Ltd; Mr Shanker Annaswamy, Regional General Manager, IBM India; Mr Ashish Chowdhary, Country Head, India, Nokia Siemens Networks; and Mr Henrik Carle, Chief Financial Officer, Ericsson India, during a press conference to announce the 50-million customer mark in the Capital on Monday. —

Our Bureau

New Delhi, Oct. 1 Bharti Airtel announced on Monday that it has crossed the 50-million customer mark within 12 years of operation, making it the fastest in the world by a private telecom company. It now aims to add the next 50 million customers by 2010.

“The journey for first 50 million (customers) was completed within 12 years of starting operations in November 1995. We now expect to reach 100 million customer mark by 2010 with massive thrust on rural expansion. We will make significant investment in network expansion to establish presence in all census towns and over 5,00,000 villages across India by 2010,” Mr Manoj Kohli, President and CEO of Bharti Airtel, said. The 50-million customer base covers mobile as well as broadband and telecom subscribers.

Top ten

The company, which has joined the league of global top ten mobile operators in terms of subscriber base, is estimated to have 47.9 million wireless subscribers by September-end. The actual mobile addition figures for September would be released by the Cellular Operators Association of India in the next few days.

“Our current rate of addition of two million subscribers monthly implies that it will take us two years to reach the next 50 million subscribers, but we will have to see how quickly we do it. We have no hesitation in going for low usage or smaller customers,” Mr Akhil Gupta, Joint Managing Director of Bharti Airtel, said.

The company will shortly launch IPTV and direct-to-home services. “In satellite TV, we are getting ready to launch services by the end of the fiscal. We have already got the licence, the transponders have been allocated by ISRO to us, and our equipment has started to come in,” Mr Kohli said. He said that IPTV services would commence by the next quarter in Delhi and in other cities, including Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai in the next fiscal.