Airtel

About the Company

• Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 18 countries
across Asia and Africa. It is headquartered in New Delhi, India
• The company ranks amongst the top 3 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers
• In India, the company's product offerings include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce,
fixed line services, high speed home broadband, DTH, enterprise services including national &
international long distance services to carriers
• In the rest of the geographies, it offers 2G, 3G, 4G wireless services and mobile commerce Important People
• Bharti Airtel had over 403 million customers across its operations at the end of March 2018 Chairman Sunil Mittal
• Airtel's equipment is provided and maintained by Ericsson, Huawei, and Nokia Networks whereas IT MD & CEO Gopal Vittal
support is provided by IBM Headquarters Delhi, India
• In June 2010, Bharti Airtel acquired the African business of Zain Telecom for $10.7 billion making it the Revenue (FY19) INR 80,780 Cr
largest ever acquisition by an Indian telecom firm Employees (FY19) 14,818
Business Divisions
MOBILE SERVICES:Bharti Airtel offers GSM mobile services in all the TELEMEDIA SERVICES: The group offers high-speed broadband with
22 telecom circles of India and is the largest mobile service provider in the best in class network. With fixed line services in 87 cities, it keeps
the country, based on the number of customers customers updated round the clock.
AIRTEL BUSINESS provides services to Large Enterprises, DIGITAL TV SERVICE: From DVD quality picture and sound, the best
Governments, Small & Medium businesses and carrier customers. It is and widest variety of channels and programmes to the best on-demand
India's leading provider of communication and ICT services. content can be found on Airtel Live.
Sustainability Journey
• Airtel's sustainability journey endeavours to contribute further to our society and to our environment
• 81% reduction in CO2 emissions per Terabyte (TB) in network infrastructure in the past 5 years and 28.7% reduction as against FY15-16
• Over 71.4 Mn units of renewable power wheeled into operations
• Benefitted over 3.8 Mn farmers through IFFCO KISAN SANCHAR LIMITED
• Over 198000 children benefitted through Bharti Foundation which is more than a 130% increase from FY 2015-16
• Recycled over 2400 tonnes of e-waste and refurbished over 500000 DTH units in FY 2016-17
Company in News
Bharti Airtel announced the launch of its converged digital Airtel has designed and implemented a future ready State Wide Area
entertainment play: Airtel Xstream. Airtel Xstream is part of Airtel’s Network (SWAN) for the Government of Uttar Pradesh as part of
vision of building a world-class digital entertainment ecosystem for Government of India’s e-Governance initiative. UPSWAN 2.O is an
Digital India and make it accessible to customers through innovative integrated solution comprising of 885 PoPs with MPLS bandwidth that
devices and exciting applications. Over the coming months, Airtel plans will connect State, District, Block and Tehsil Headquarters across the
to roll out a range of exciting solutions to cater to the entertainment state and enable e-governance and digital delivery of government
needs of every customer segment of India that is getting transformed services to citizens. (July 2019)
through rapid adoption of high speed data services. (Aug 2019)
Airtel has been conferred two top awards at the 17th edition of the Frost Airtel Payments Bank said that it has enabled open loop BHIM UPI
& Sullivan ICT Awards. It was awarded the “Enterprise Data Service based payments at over 500000 merchant points across India, allowing
Provider of the Year” and the “Enterprise Telecom Service Provider of consumers to make digital payments using any BHIM UPI enabled bank
the Year” in the large enterprise segment. The win reiterates Airtel’s or payments app over their mobile phones. Airtel said that it plans to
position as the partner of choice for connectivity services delivered on ramp up its offline merchant base and scale up the ecosystem to one
best-in-class technology and state-of-the-art network. (July 2019) million merchants in the next phase. (June 2019)
Relevant Questions
• Airtel seems to have accomplished its mission of increasing the reach of its 2G services. Now, as we move to the next problem of increasing the
reach of 3G and 4G services to rural India, what are the challenges faced in this regard?
• With the data consumption and traffic booming in India, how is Airtel scaling up its infrastructure to meet this increased load?
• Sunil Mittal had said that Airtel would not participate in the auction of the 5G spectrum at the prices quoted by TRAI, which were said to be
exorbitant. Do you think TRAI's upcoming review of the pricing would provide some respite or would Airtel reconsider its plan?
• From a Sourcing point of view, does a change in network technology (such as from 4G to 5G) cause a change in your processes?