Bharti Airtel, with more than 303 million mobile subscribers across 20 countries in South Asia and Africa, has “moved up one position in the global rankings”, WCIS said. It now leads China Unicom and Mexican carrier America Movil, which are at fourth and fifth spots, respectively.
The company had a modest start in 1995 as a single-circle operator in New Delhi. Two decades since, it is the No. 1 in India, the world’s second largest mobile telecom market, and offers services across the second-, third- and fourth-generation platforms. Its mobile networks carried more than 1.23 trillion minutes of calls and over 333 petabytes of data in the fiscal year ended on March 31, 2015.
Chairman Sunil Mittal called the feat “a landmark in Airtel’s journey, which underlined the strength of its business model and brand”. Bharti Airtel pioneered a low-cost business model based on outsourcing, which allowed it to expand services rapidly.
In a letter to employees, Mittal said this model has been feted and adopted by telcos across the world. “We also pioneered passive infrastructure sharing that has helped the telecom industry lower costs while benefitting the customers, and contributed to clean environment by avoiding duplication of towers,” he wrote in the letter, which EThas seen.
He said the next phase of the company’s growth would be led by mobile internet. “This will again be a transformational phase and we have the opportunity to work with disruptive models and technologies and add value to the lives of our customers in an even more meaningful way,” he said. The company, however, faces threat in India from Reliance Jio Infocomm, the telecom arm of Reliance Industries.
Jio is set to launch commercial 4G operations around December and is widely tipped to make a dramatic entry with a disruptive tariff structure. Existing operators expect its launch to trigger a fresh round of blood-letting in an already hyper competitive market. Earlier this month, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani said Jio would offer data and voice services at half or less than half the current rates.
Africa, where Bharti Airtel entered in 2010, is a drag on the company as its operations in the continent continue to bleed. In the quarter through March 2015, net losses there widened to $183 million (Rs 1,155.7 crore) from $105 million a year earlier, stung mainly by forex losses. Revenue dropped nearly 13%.
ET Bureau
Get Unlimited Access to The Economic Times
