Bharti Airtel Limited, commonly known as Airtel, is an Indian multinational telecommunications services company headquartered in New Delhi, India. It operates in 20 countries across South Asia, Africa, and the Channel Islands. Airtel has a GSM network in all countries in which it operates, providing 2G, 3G and 4Gservices depending upon the country of operation. Airtel is the world's third largest mobile telecommunications company by subscribers, with over 275 million subscribers across 20 countries as of July 2013.[6] It is the largest cellular service provider in India, with 192.22 million subscribers as of August 2013.[7] Airtel is the third largest in-country mobile operator by subscriber base, behind China Mobile and China Unicom.
Airtel is the largest provider of mobile telephony and second largest provider of fixed telephony in India, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services. It offers its telecom services under the "airtel" brand, and is headed by Sunil Bharti Mittal. Bharti Airtel is the first Indian telecom service provider to achieve Cisco Gold Certification.[8] 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.
Airtel is credited with pioneering the business strategy of outsourcing all of its business operations except marketing, sales and finance and building the 'minutes factory' model of low cost and high volumes. The strategy has since been copied by several operators.[9] Its network—base stations, microwave links, etc.—is maintained by Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Network[10] whereas IT support is provided by IBM,[11] and transmission towers are maintained by another company (Bharti Infratel Ltd. in India).[12] 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, which allowed Airtel to provide low call rates of 
1/minute (US$0.02/minute).[13] During the last financial year (2009–10), Bharti negotiated for its strategic partner Alcatel-Lucent to manage the network infrastructure for the tele-media business. On 31 May 2012, Bharti Airtel awarded the three-year contract to Alcatel-Lucent for setting up an Internet Protocol access network (mobile backhaul) across the country. This would help consumers access internet at faster speed and high quality internet browsing on mobile handsets.[14]
1/minute (US$0.02/minute).[13] During the last financial year (2009–10), Bharti negotiated for its strategic partner Alcatel-Lucent to manage the network infrastructure for the tele-media business. On 31 May 2012, Bharti Airtel awarded the three-year contract to Alcatel-Lucent for setting up an Internet Protocol access network (mobile backhaul) across the country. This would help consumers access internet at faster speed and high quality internet browsing on mobile handsets.[14]History[edit]
 | This section does not cite any references or sources. (October 2012) |
Sunil Bharti Mittal founded the Bharti Group. In 1983, Mittal was in an agreement with Germany's Siemens to manufacture push-button telephone models for the Indian market. In 1986, Mittal incorporated Bharti Telecom Limited (BTL), and his company became the first in India to offer push-button telephones, establishing the basis of Bharti Enterprises. By the early 1990s, Sunil Mittal had also launched the country's first fax machines and its first cordless telephones. In 1992, Mittal won a bid to build a cellular phone network in Delhi. In 1995, Mittal incorporated the cellular operations as Bharti Tele-Ventures and launched service in Delhi. In 1996, cellular service was extended to Himachal Pradesh. In 1999, Bharti Enterprises acquired control of JT Holdings, and extended cellular operations to Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. In 2000, Bharti acquired control of Skycell Communications, in Chennai. In 2001, the company acquired control of Spice Cell in Calcutta. Bharti Enterprises went public in 2002, and the company was listed on Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange of India. In 2003, the cellular phone operations were rebranded under the single Airtel brand. In 2004, Bharti acquired control of Hexacom and entered Rajasthan. In 2005, Bharti extended its network to Andaman and Nicobar. This expansion allowed it to offer voice services all across India. In 2009, Airtel launched its first international mobile network in Sri Lanka. In 2010, Airtel acquired the African operations of the Kuwait based Zain Telecom. In March 2012, Airtel launched a mobile operation in Rwanda. [15]
Airtel launched "Hello Tunes", a Caller ring back tone service (CRBT), in July 2004 becoming to the first operator in India to do so. The Airtel theme song, composed by A.R. Rahman, was the most popular tune on that year.[16]
On 26 February 2013, Airtel announced that it had deployed Ericsson’s Mobile Broadband Charging (MBC) solution and completely modernized its prepaid services for its subscribers in India. As a part of the deal, Ericsson’s multi service MBC suite allows prepaid customers to have personalized profile based data charging plans. Prepaid customers will be able to customize their data plans across mobility, fixed line and broadband by cross bundling across multiple domains (2G, 3G, 4G/LTE & Wi-Fi). It will also offer flexible multi service charging in geographical redundant mode, making Airtel the first operator to implement geographical redundancy at such a large scale.[17] In May 2013, Bharti Infotel paid Rs 50,000 as compensation to a customer "for unfair trade practices". The customer alleged that the company continued to aggressively demand payment despite customer requests for disconnection of service.[18]
Corporate Structure[edit]
| This section does not cite any references or sources. (October 2012) |
Airtel's initial corporate structure concentrated on the hierarchy of the operations inside the company as a whole. The structure depicted the corresponding operation/region of different in-charges and it didn't hold anyone responsible for each of its services. So, the company found it better to restructure its corporate hierarchy. The transformed organisational structure has two distinct Customer Business Units (CBU) with clear focus on B2C (Business to Customer) and B2B (Business to Business) segments. Bharti Airtel's B2C business unit will comprehensively service the retail consumers, homes and small offices, by combining the erstwhile business units - Mobile, Telemedia, Digital TV, and other emerging businesses (like M-commerce, M-health, M-advertising etc.). The B2C organization will consist of Consumer Business and Market Operations.
Worldwide presence[edit]
Airtel is the one of the largest mobile operator in the world in terms of subscriber base and has a commercial presence in 20 countries and the Channel Islands.
Its area of operations include:
- The Indian Subcontinent:
- Airtel Bangladesh, in Bangladesh
- Airtel, in India
- Airtel Sri Lanka, in Sri Lanka
- Airtel Africa, which operates in 17 African countries:
- Burkina Faso, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
- The British Crown Dependency islands of Jersey and Guernsey, under the brand name Airtel-Vodafone, through an agreement with Vodafone.
Airtel operates in the following countries:
| Country | Site | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
 Bangladesh | Airtel Bangladesh | Airtel Bangladesh had about 8 million customers as on Sep 2013.[19] |
 Burkina Faso | Airtel Burkina Faso | Airtel Burkina Faso is the dominant player with 1,433,000 customers representing 50% market share.[20] |
 Chad | Airtel Chad | Airtel Chad is the #1 operator with 69% market share.[20] |
 Democratic Republic of the Congo | Airtel DRC | Airtel is the market leader with almost 5 million customers at the end of 2010.[citation needed] |
 Gabon | Airtel Gabon | Airtel Gabon has 829,000 customers and its market share stood at 61%.[21] |
 Ghana | Airtel Ghana | Airtel Ghana had about 1.76 million customers at the end of 2010.[22] |
 India | Airtel | Airtel is the market leader with almost 193.4 million customers as on Sept 30, 2013. [23] |
 Kenya | Airtel Kenya | Airtel Kenya is the second largest operator and has 4 million customers.[24] |
 Madagascar | Airtel Madagascar | Airtel holds second place in the mobile telecom market in Madagascar, has a 39% market share and over 1.4 million customers.[20] |
 Malawi | Airtel Malawi | Airtel Malawi is the market leader with a market share of 72%.[20] |
 Niger | Airtel Niger | Airtel Niger is the market leader with a 68% market share.[20] |
 Nigeria | Airtel Nigeria | |
 Republic of the Congo | Airtel Congo B | Airtel Congo is the market leader with a 55% market share.[20] |
 Rwanda | Airtel Rwanda | Airtel launched services in Rwanda on 30 March 2012.[25] |
 Seychelles | Airtel Seychelles | Airtel is the leading comprehensive telecommunications services providers with over 55% market share of mobile market in Seychelles.[26] |
 Sierra Leone | Airtel Sierra Leone | |
 Sri Lanka | Airtel Sri Lanka | Airtel Sri Lanka commenced operations on 12 January 2009. It had about 1.8 million mobile customers at the end of 2010.[22] |
 Tanzania | Airtel Tanzania | Airtel Tanzania is the market leader with a 38% market share.[20] |
 Uganda | Airtel Uganda | Airtel Uganda stands as the #2 operator with a market share of 38%.[20] |
 Zambia | Airtel Zambia | Airtel Zambia is the market leader with 69% market share.[citation needed] |
Channel Islands† :  Jersey Guernsey | Airtel Vodafone | Airtel operates in the Channel Islands under the brand name Airtel–Vodafone through an agreement with Vodafone. |
†Jersey and Guernsey are British Crown Dependencies. They are not independent countries. Therefore, Airtel's countries of operation is considered to be 20.
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