Bharti has reached the 10 million customers milestone. What is your next target?
The vision is to create a globally admired company. We'll focus on delivering high-quality customer services, employee empowerment and leadership development, innovative products and services, operational efficiency, and building a powerful brand.

Bharti has done well on the numbers front but a lot needs to be done on quality of service. What steps has Bharti taken for improving QoS in the future?
We have consistently done well on all service parameters including QoS. Our performance has been well recognized, nationally and internationally, at various fora. We have won a series of awards in the last 12 months, each recognizing Bharti's superior service and performance.

As per a Goldman Sachs report, Bharti's weighted average ARPU is 13 percent less than Hutch. Being a leader, how do you plan to bridge the gap?
In a low penetration, mass market like India, ARPU has lost the kind of relevance it had earlier. Today, leadership is to be seen in terms of total revenues, operating efficiency, and capital productivity.

Indian service providers have been talking about connecting over 6,000 cities. What are your plans for connecting new towns and cities?
Bharti is the only telecom company with presence in all the 23 circles of the country. We are currently operational in more than 2,700 towns with over 10,000 cell sites. We plan to add another 10,000 cell sites and expand to 5,200 plus towns.

Bharti looks weak on consumer broadband services. What is the strategy that Bharti has devised to cater to broadband-the next big revolution in Indian telecom?
Bharti was one of the first companies to recognize the potential of broadband services like DSL. Today, we have around 150,000 DSL customers. In the current fiscal, we plan to roll out broadband and telephone services in the top 50 towns of the country.

In the mobile space, everybody is talking about 3G services. What is Bharti's strategy here and what is likely to be the expected market size of the 3G services?

We believe that 3G will be here in the next 18–24 months. We estimate that about 10–15 percent of Indian customers in the next 24 months will be using 3G services.

The next phase of growth in mobile and broadband will come from content services (like entertainment). How is Bharti gearing up for content services?
Bharti has always been the first to bring unique and innovative services to India. Airtel was the first mobile service in the world to screen a full-length movie on mobile phones. Airtel Live (a multi-access entertainment portal); Airtel portfolio manager and stock ticker services in association with the Bombay Stock Exchange, Hello Tunes, and BlackBerry are just some examples that illustrate our commitment to innovation.

Page(s)   1  2