Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel Limited (Hindi: भारती एयरटेल) (BSE: 532454) formerly known as Bharti Tele-Ventures LTD (BTVL) is an Indian company offering telcomunnication services in 19 countries. It the largest cellular service provider in India, with more than 137 million subscriptions as of June 2010. Bharti Airtel is the world's third largest, single-country mobile operator and fifth largest telecom operator in the world in terms of subscriber base. It also offers fixed line services and broadband services. It offers its telecom services under the Airtel brand and is headed by Sunil Bharti Mittal. The company also provides land-line telephone services and broadband Internet access (DSL) in over 96 cities in India. It also acts as a carrier for national and international long distance communication services. The company has a submarine cable landing station at Chennai, which connects the submarine cable connecting Chennai and Singapore.

It is known for being the first mobile phone company in the world to outsource everything except marketing and sales and finance. Its network (base stations, microwave links, etc.) is maintained by Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Network, business support by IBM and transmission towers by another company. Ericsson agreed for the first time, to be paid by the minute for installation and maintenance of their equipment rather than being paid up front. This enables the company to provide pan-India phone call rates of Rs. 1/minute (U$0.02/minute). During the last financial year [2009-10], Bharti has roped in a strategic partner Alcatel-Lucent to manage the network infrastructure for the Telemedia Business

The company is structured into four strategic business units - Mobile, Telemedia, Enterprise and Digital TV. The mobile business offers services in 18 countries across the Indian Subcontinent and Africa. The Telemedia business provides broadband, IPTV and telephone services in 89 Indian cities. The Digital TV business provides Direct-to-Home TV services across India. The Enterprise business provides end-to-end telecom solutions to corporate customers and national and international long distance services to telcos. On August 11, 2010, Bharti Airtel announced that it would acquire 100% stake in Telecom Seychelles taking its global presence to 19 countries.

Globally, Bharti Airtel is the 3rd largest in-country mobile operator by subscriber base, behind China Mobile and China Unicom. In India, the company has a 30.7% share of the wireless services market. In January 2010, company announced that Manoj Kohli, Joint Managing Director and current Chief Executive Officer of Indian and South Asian operations, will become the Chief Executive Officer of the International Business Group from 1 April 2010. He will be overseeing Bharti's overseas business. Current Dy. CEO, Sanjay Kapoor, will replace Manoj Kohli and will be the CEO, effective from 1 April 2010.