NEW DELHI: Despite stiff competition from players like Vodafone, Reliance Communication, BSNL

and Idea among others, Bharti Airtel has a market share of almost 33% in mobile segment. At present,
around 60% of Airtel's customer additions come from rural areas. It has already set up 14,000 Airtel
Service Centres in rural areas and planning to have 1 lakh such centres across the country by March,
2010.

"The Indian telecom sector, seen as providing the most affordable services in the world, has grown by
leaps and bounds in the last decade. This remarkable journey to 100 million customers is a testament
to the vision and commitment of a company that benchmarks itself with the best in the world,'' Sunil
Bharti Mittal, chairman and group chief executive officer of Bharti Enterprise said.

After achieving this landmark, the next big challenge for Sunil Mittal is to globalise his company.
And, he is satisfied with his position in Indian market.

''We are ahead by 25 million (2.5 crore) customers to our nearest competitor in the domestic market,''
he said.

Read more: Bharti has 33% market share - The Times of India
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Bharti-has-33-
market-share/articleshow/4537031.cms#ixzz0z39EbwMM
Airtel to focus more on rural coverage
Our Bureau
Kochi, Dec. 29
Encouraged by the response from the rural coverage which contributed 50 per cent of its new business, Bharti Airtel is focusing
more on the rural sector by offering various tailor made packages.
Dr Jai Menon, Group CIO, Bharti Enterprises and Director, Bharti Airtel, told reporters here that Airtel Rural Service Centres
offers one-stop shop for getting end to end service to customers. The company has developed a rural model service and had
partnered with IFFCO to offer a combined value proposition for customers such as crop information, weather etc on vernacular
languages.
Of the six lakh villages in the country, the company covers about four lakh villages in the rural sector, which would be increased
to five lakh shortly. With the rural coverage, the company is offering relevance, which is important for rural India, he said. There
is a huge amount of confidence among customers following the initiative by Airtel with IFFCO.
It had also set up a helpline to provide details on crops. The company is sending five voice SMS to farmers everyday related to
crop inspection, purchases, weather etc.
The company, he said, is also bullish on the South market and it will continue to offer its global standards of best technology to
further fuel the growth in Kerala. Considering the vast potential of broadband and all other advanced telecom features, Mr
Menon said the company is looking at a comprehensive broadband strategy, which is a revolution that is on in the country.
Bharti Airtel Q3 profit up 2% as competition hots up

Our Bureau
New Delhi, Jan. 22
Bharti Airtel has reported a 2 per cent growth in its consolidated net profit to Rs 2,210 crore in the third quarter ended
December 31, 2009 compared to Rs 2,159 crore in the corresponding quarter previous year.
However declining tariffs and high level of competition in the mobile market have hit the company's key parameters.
Airtel's average revenue per user (ARPU) declined 29 per cent from Rs 324 a month in the third quarter of 2008 to Rs 230. The
average minutes of use per subscriber has also fallen from 505 minutes to 446 during the period.
The churn rate, which is the percentage of subscribers giving up their connection, has gone up from 2.9 per cent in December
2008 for the pre-paid card segment to 6.5 per cent in the third quarter of the current fiscal year.
A number of new mobile players have entered the market over the past year offering low tariffs forcing incumbent players to
join the price war. Bharti Airtel's market share declined from 24.7 per cent to 22.7 per cent during the period even as its share
of net additions fell from 25.9 per cent in 2008 to 15.9 per cent.
But Bharti's numbers are better than some of the other listed telecom players'. The total number of minutes on Airtel's mobile
network grew 24 per cent as declining tariffs enabled users make more number of calls. The strong cash flow of Rs 4,446 crore
resulted in the reduction of net debt to Rs 1,931 crore with net debt to equity ratio, reaching an all-time low of 0.05.
Overall, the operator's subscriber base grew 42 per cent from 88.42 million in the previous year to 125.2 million at the end of
December 2009. This includes subscribers on Bharti DTH and fixed-line telephone service.
Commenting on the performance, Mr Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Airtel, said: "Bharti Airtel
continues to ensure a robust market share despite the hyper competition and maintains its drive for internal efficiencies by
leveraging its scale economics."
Telecom Companies in India
The stupendous growth of the telecommunication companies in India over the last fifteen years can be attributed to the
liberal government of India, economic policy. The economic renaissance effected in the early 1990s brought around a paradigm
shift on the overall business scenario of India. The telecommunication companies in India went through a huge make-over
during the implementation of the open-market policy of India.

The erstwhile closed market policy was replaced by a more liberal form of economic policy. A whole new form of Indian
Telecommunication Policy was drafted to compliment the change effected in the economic policy of India. The
amendment effected the new telecommunication policy of India made huge changes with respect to investments and entry of
Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) and Foreign Institution Investors (FII) respectively, into the virgin Indian telecommunication
market. This resulted entry of private, domestic and foreign telecommunication companies in India.

The economic contribution made by these newly formed telecommunication companies of India is really mentioned worthy and
this industry witnessed highest growth after the Indian Information Technology industry. The robust growth of Indian economy
after the economic liberalization in the 1990s induced massive change in the telecom policy and new draft was framed and
implemented by the 'Telecom Regulatory Authority of India' (TRAI) and 'Department of Telecommunication' (DOT), under the
Ministry of Telecommunication government of India. The main aim of these telecommunication companies in India is to provide
basic telephony services to each and every Indian.

With the advent of private telecommunication companies in India, the industry witnessed introduction of mobile telephones into
the Indian market and it became popular amongst the Indian masses in no time. Today two types of mobile phone service
providers operates in the Indian market, like the following -

• Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM)

• Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA)
The main binding objective for all the telecommunication companies operating in India are as follows -

• To facilitate telecommunication for all

• Ensuring quick availability of telephone connectivity
• Achieve universal service access at affordable price covering all Indian villages, as early as possible
• Providing world class telecommunication services
• Solving consumer complaints, resolve disputes, and special attention to be given to public interface
• To provide widest possible range of services at reasonable prices
• To emerges as a major manufacturing base and major exporter of telecommunication equipment
• To protect the defense and security interests of the country
Three types of service providers exist in the Indian telecommunication sector, like the following -

• State owned companies like - Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone
Nigam Ltd
• Private Indian owned companies like - Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices.
• Foreign invested companies like - Hutchison-Essar, Bharti Tele-Ventures, Escotel, Idea Cellular, BPL Mobile, Spice
Communications etc.
 Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel is one of the topmost companies in the telecom sector in India and is under the Bharti Enterprises
Group. Airtel Bharti has been ranked as the best performance company in the whole world by the Business
Week magazine in 2007.

The Company Bharti Airtel is in India the biggest integrated and also the 1st telephone service provider in the private
sector, which has footprint in around 23 telecom circles. Bharti Airtel Limited has been since its very beginning using the
latest technology and thus the company has paved the way for the telecom sector in India with its world-class services and
products. This has helped Bharti Airtel Company to grow for the number of its customers has increased very rapidly over
the years. The company has around 50 million customers in 2007 and its market share of mobile subscribers in India is
at 23.4%.

The company Bharti Airtel Limited's total revenue amounted to Rs.12,242 crore in 2006- 2007 and the net profit stood at
Rs.3,126 crore. The Company Bharti Airtel is divided into 3 business units that are:
• Broadband & Telephone (B&T) services
• Enterprise services
• Mobile services
Among the various services that the Bharti Airtel Limited Company provides to its customers, the services of broadband
and telephone (B&T) are 1 of them. The company provides broadband Internet services of high speed for it has the best
network in India. The company Bharti Airtel also provides telephone services in around 94 cities of the country and this
helps the people to stay connected with one another. The company plans to expand its broadband and telephone services
by providing IPTV services and DTH operations.

Further Bharti Airtel provides enterprise services to its customers. The services of enterprise provide telecom end-to-end
solutions to customers who belong to the corporate sector and also long distance services to international and national
carriers. The company Bharti Airtel has more than 35,016 kilometers of optic fiber, a submarine landing station, and is also
a member of South East Asia- Middle East- Western Europe- 4. All this has helped the company to provide the best
enterprise services to its customers. The company Bharti Airtel Limited plans to expand its enterprise services so that it can
achieve the status of a global carrier within a period of 2- 3 years.

The company Bharti Airtel Limited provides mobile services to its customers. The company provides fixed and mobile
wireless services in around 23 telecom circles by using the GSM technology. Bharti Airtel Company has become the biggest
mobile service provider in India on the basis of the number of customers. The company in the future plans to expand its
network in order to establish its presence in more than 500,000 villages all across the country by 2010.

Bharti Airtel has become a leading company in the telecom sector in India due to the fact that it has provided the best
quality of services to its customers. And this has been possible for the company has a wide telecom network that is of the
latest technology. The Company Bharti Airtel Limited in the future also should continue to upgrade its facilities for this will
ensure that high grade of services are provided to its customers.
 Top 30 Telecom
companies in India by
market cap
Mar. 25 2009 - 12:00 am
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Top, Telecom, companies, India, market, cap

Bharti Airtel is one of the most valued company of India. It is also the leading telecom provider in India. Reliance Communications
follows Airtel in market capitalization. Interestingly the same order holds good for the total number of subscribers these telecom
companies has.

Bharti has a subscriber base of 91.1 million and added 2.7 million subscribers in Feb 2009. Reliance
added 3.3 million new subscribers in FEB 2009 to take the total to 69.6 million. Reliance rolled out its
GSM operations late last year following which there was a surge in the number of new subscribers. It
also added more subscribers than Airtel in a month.
Following MTNL is the list of other telecom providers in infrastructure, equipment and value added
services. Vodafone-Essar which has 66 million subscribers is not listed on the Indian Bourses.
BSNL is also not listed and that is the reason why it is not in the list. If listed it could be one of the top
companies. There is a lot of things happening around BSNL’s IPO even before the recession started.
Now, that the recession has started the IPO plans were postponed. But, BSNL will dilute 10% stake sooner than later.
*Market valuations as on 20 MAR 2009. Source (ETIG)
List of top 30 Telecom companies in India :
 Company Name Market Cap in Crores

Bharti Airtel 108066.23

Reliance Communications 32683.44

Idea Cellular 14368.92

Tata Communications 13181.25

Tata Teleservices 4393.06

Spice Communications 4136.13

MTNL 4044.6

GTL 2475.12

GTL Infrastructure 2210.49

OnMobile Global 1403.52

HFCL Infotel 457.73

ITI 413.28

Him.Fut.Comm 386.99

Astra Microwave 241.88

Gemini Communications 125.71

Avaya Global 118.54

Shyam Telecom 64.58

Nelco 63.55

XL Telecom & Energy Limited 55.96

Goldstone Infratech Ltd 52.6

Nu Tek 48.16

Kavveri Telecom 26.51

Krone Communications 24.52

Mobile Telecommunications Ltd 17.37

Valiant Communications 16.58

Pun.Communi. 16.19

Nettlinx 12.68

Aishwarya Telecom Ltd 9.86

Interg.Digit 3.15

Vital Communications 2.81

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Your question is in a somewhat broken English, so I'm not entirely sure what it is
you're looking for, but I'll try to address what I can.

Telecommunication systems all require a certain amount of electrogmagnetic

bandwidth to operate. In different parts of the world, different organizations allot
parts of the overall electrogmagnetic spectrum to different uses. In the United
States, that organization is the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC);
in other parts of the world, it will be different. Also, in many parts of the world,
international agreements are required so that communications systems in
neighboring countries are not interfering with each other.

So, the spectrum is allotted to various purposes: analog TV broadcasts get a

certain slot (from 54 to 88 MHz, 174 to 216 MHz and 470 to 806 MHz), FM radio
gets a certain slot (88 to 108 MHz), AM radio gets a certain slot (535 to 1700
kHz), cellular communications (mobile phones) get certain slots (there are lots of
these as little gaps in the spectrum have been given over to cell phone use).

As the world becomes increasingly wireless (with cordless phones, cell phones,
wireless internet, GPS devices, etc), allocation of the available spectrum to each
technology becomes increasingly contentious. Each user community (usually
manufacturers of the wireless equipment) wants more bandwidth in order to be
able to sell and service more units. For any given slot of bandwidth, there is a
limited amount of data that can be shared in that bandwidth, so vendors want
more bandwidth so they can handle more devices in a given area.

Further contention arises if neighboring countries do not have agreements,

because then differences from country to country can cause interferences along
border areas.

• 3 years ago
• Report Abuse
Asker's Rating:

Asker's Comment:

In India, an unending drama is going on between Telecom operators and

TRAI(Telecom regulatory authority of India) on spectrum allotment. This
reply gives an overall idea about the dispute.

From a policy point of view, India's [ Images ] telecom industry is getting exciting once again. After a lull of a few years, we're back to

the same half-truths from regulators/policy makers, and the all too familiar attempts to help favoured firms.

So, earlier last week, the Telecom Commission, which is headed by the telecom secretary, okayed Reliance Communications' [ Get

Quote ] February 2006 proposal to offer GSM-cellular technology for its mobile services - currently, Reliance uses CDMA technology to

offer mobile services.

On the face of it, the clearance seems trivial, given how telecom licences are technology agnostic - you can use GSM or CDMA, how

does it matter?

Actually, it does and it doesn't. Sure it doesn't matter if Reliance gives its subscribers connectivity by using either CDMA or GSM

technology. But the catch is that Reliance cannot use GSM technology on the spectrum airwaves allotted to it - each type of equipment
typically works on pre-specified spectrum bands and, so, CDMA works on the 800 MHz band while GSM-cellular works on the 900 and

1,800 MHz band.

So, by virtue of allowing Reliance to use GSM, the Telecom Commission has said that Reliance will now get fresh spectrum in the 1,800

MHz band as well! Interestingly, six years ago, GSM firms asked the government to allot them CDMA spectrum since the licences were

now technology-neutral, but the government told them to get lost - they were told that while they could use GSM or CDMA, it would

have to be in the spectrum bands already allotted to them.

What this means is that while over 500 players slug it out for fresh spectrum in various telecom circles, Reliance will definitely get it.

Right now, Reliance Communications associates Swan and Cheetah are 3rd or 4th in the line to get spectrum in most telecom circles.

But since the government is going to get only 20 MHz of extra spectrum once the defence forces vacate it, and it has to keep at least 10

MHz to meet the expansion needs of the existing players, only two new players can get spectrum in most circles (the minimum each

firm will get is 4.4 MHz). So, Swan/Cheetah may or may not get the spectrum (the others, like real estate firms DLF/Parsvnath may as

well go home!) - but once Reliance Communications' dual-use spectrum is approved, the company moves up to second position and it

becomes certain it will get GSM spectrum!

Imagine the irony, and the lesson to be drawn. Reliance (then owned by Mukesh Ambani [ Images ]) decided to use its fixed-line licence

to provide mobile services in 2001, so the government legalised that and said they could do CDMA mobile on it - now the same CDMA

licence is to be treated as a GSM one. Sure, the company will have to pay Rs 1,660 crore (Rs 16.60 billion) for it, but that's a pittance

compared to what the spectrum is worth.

That, of course, is just one part of the story. Ever since the great spectrum sale began, and columns such as this one pointed out that

first-come-first-served would just allow firms to get scarce spectrum cheap and then trade in it, officials have been pooh poohing this.

Various parts of the Trai recommendations are cited in this context. There's a rollout obligation - unless firms roll out their networks, they

cannot merge or get acquired (Section 5.27iv) or get fresh spectrum (Section 5.27ii) - in addition, the government is contemplating

putting in a lock-in, whereby the firm getting spectrum will not be allowed to change shareholders for a certain period of time.

All of this sounds very good, but all of it is hogwash. One, in 1997, the fixed-line providers had rollout obligations for village phones by

2000 that entailed a capital expenditure of Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion) - firms fulfilled just 12 per cent of their obligations by 2003, and

all that happened was the obligations were rolled back.

Rollout obligations for long-distance services existed, but also got rolled back. So, there's no reason why these ones shouldn't.

In any case, the rollout obligations aren't onerous - you have to reach 30 per cent of the country's district headquarters within three

years.

If you don't, under the current policy, you have to pay a maximum fine of just Rs 1 crore (for GSM) to Rs 7 crore (for CDMA) - while your

licence was to be terminated if the rollout delays were 20-52 weeks, TRAI has recommended that no termination be done and that,

instead, a monetary fine be levied (5.27i)!

In any case, TRAI has made a separate recommendation that "active infrastructure" sharing be allowed - that is, Company A be allowed

to use the towers/radios of Company B to provide services for its customers. Once this is allowed, rollout obligations have no meaning

since, if Company A does not want to invest in infrastructure, all it needs to do is to sign an active infrastructure-sharing agreement with

Company B to cover its rollout obligations!

As for a lock-in period before share transfers are allowed, this was the policy in 1995 as well. The reason why it was changed was

simple, bankers couldn't lend to firms as long as this was in place! After all, if Company A takes a loan of Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) but

goes bankrupt, bankers/creditors need to take over the assets - but they can't if the law prevents them.

The moral of the story: there will be trading in spectrum and the benefit of this won't go to the government, but to the companies just by

virtue of them being first in the queue - even lotteries don't reward people for being the first in line to buy tickets.