Bharti Airtel India's leading provider of telecommunications services featured on Garamchai.Com

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Sunil Bharti Mittal, group chairman, Bharti Group, has been awarded the VOICE&DATA Telecom Man of the Year 2006

The likes of Lakshmi Narain Mittal have done India proud by becoming global successes. Indians, including those settled abroad, are immensely proud of his achievement; and like Mittal, there are several emerging entrepreneurs and business houses that have been a part of the "Brand India" in the global arena. The global Non Resident Indian (NRI) community is aware of the traditional Indian business houses, and is only now starting to catch up with the new economy "back home" and how such enterprises are setting examples of entrepreneurship not just in India, but globally as well. Bharti Airtel's is one such story.

Bharti Airtel's success story is of interest particularly because it happened at a time when the Indian Telecom industry had almost been written off. The public and media had backed out of what seemed then to be a losing proposition. Today, the company's success - as India's largest integrated private telecom services provider -- speaks for itself.

As the first and only private service provider with a footprint in all the 23-telecom circles, Bharti Airtel has been at the forefront of the telecom revolution in India. The company, since its inception 11 years ago, has steered the course of the telecom sector in the country. Bharti recently signed an estimated $400 million contract with Nokia, further expanding its networks in 8 Airtel circles.

Today, the company provides telecommunications services to nearly 28.69 million customers -- as of September '06 - which consists of 27.06 million mobile customers. It has been rated among 10 best performing companies in the world in the BusinessWeek IT 100 list.

Bharti Airtel's portfolio includes mobile telephony, broadband & fixed-line services and enterprise services. With revenues of over 2.6 billion (net profit as US$ 508 million), the company complements its mobile, broadband & telephone services with national and international long distance services. The company also has a submarine cable landing station at Chennai, which connects the submarine cable between Chennai and Singapore.

Mobile Services: Bharti Airtel offers GSM mobile services in all the 23-telecom circles of India and is the largest mobile service provider in the country, based on the number of customers. The Company’s 25.65 million mobile customers accounted for a market share of 29.61 % of overall GSM wireless market, as on August 31, 2006. AirTel, the cellular brand of the Bharti group launched "IndiaOne" Long Distance Calling Card that enables customers to make domestic and international long distance calls from their cellphones at costs, which are nearly 30 per cent lower than landline long-distance calls.

Broadband & Telephone Services: The Company provides broadband (DSL) & telephone services (fixed line) in 92 cities and had 1,547,872 customers as on July 31, 2006 of which approximately 26% subscribe to broadband (DSL) services.

Enterprise Services (Carriers): The Company compliments its mobile and broadband & telephone services with national and international long distance services. It has over 35,016 route kilometers of optic fibre on its national long distance network. For international connectivity to east, it has a submarine cable landing station at Chennai (owned by an associate company) between Chennai and Singapore. For international connectivity to the west, the Company is a member of the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe – 4 (SEA-ME-WE-4) consortium along with 15 other global telecom operators. SEA-ME-WE-4 supports telephone, Internet, multimedia and various other broadband and data applications.

Enterprise Services (Corporates): The Company’s enterprise service group provides secure, scalable, seamless, reliable and customized integrated solution of voice and data communications for corporate, small and medium scale enterprises. The group focuses on delivering telecommunications services as an integrated offering including mobile, broadband & telephone, national and international long distance and data connectivity services to key account corporate customers through business relationship management.

Other Facts: Bharti Airtel has strategic alliances with SingTel and Vodafone; partnerships with Ericsson and Nokia; and an information technology alliance with IBM. The company was founded in 1995. It was formerly known as Bharti Tele-Ventures and changed its name to Bharti Airtel in April, 2006. The company is based in New Delhi, India. Bharti Airtel is a part of Bharti Enterprises. Bharti's competitions include Hutchison Essar Ltd., Reliance Communications Ltd. and state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.