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Airtel Crosses 100 Million-Subscriber Mark
11:35:49 PM
This milestone reiterates the emergence of India as one of the world’s top telecom markets, says Sunil Mittal.
Saturday, May 16, 2009:
Bharti Airtel
has crossed the 100 million customers mark, making the company the
third largest single country mobile services operator and sixth largest
in-country integrated telecom operator in the world.
The company had crossed the 75 million
customer mark in August 2008 and 50 million mark in October 2007. The
first 25 million was achieved in July 2006.
Commenting on the
occasion, Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and group CEO, Bharti
Enterprises, said, “The Indian telecom sector, seen as providing the
most affordable services in the world, has grown by leaps and bounds in
the last decade. We are proud to have led the telecom revolution that
made a positive impact on the lives of people in every corner of the
country as well as the Indian economy. 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.”
Mittal
added, “We dedicate this achievement to the nation. This milestone
reiterates the emergence of India as one of the world’s top telecom
markets, and we are delighted to be at the forefront of its growth. On
this occasion, we would like to thank all our customers, partners and
the Government of India for their constant support.”
Bharti Airtel has also announced a series of network augmentation and customer service initiatives.
On
the network front, Airtel will roll out 100,000 BTS sites by this year.
The company is planning to transform its entire fixed line network to
IP/broadband over a phased manner. This transformation will enable
Bharti Airtel’s transformation to next generation networks, offering
advanced services like high-speed Internet, triple play, media-rich
VAS, MPLS, VPN for both retail and business customers.
On the
customer service front, Airtel has started a set of initiatives to
empower the customer and currently its Self Service Option over SMS
already has over 100 million hits in a month. It is also leveraging
cutting-edge technology to build a Service Management Centre which will
monitor and manage services to ensure that customers are always kept
informed proactively.
Around 60 per cent of Airtel’s customer
additions come from rural areas. For the rural customers, Airtel has
already set up 14,000 Airtel Service Centres and going forward the
company is looking at having over 100,000 such centres across the
country by March 2010.
