Just a while ago, in a conference call the Management of Bharti Airtel confirmed that if 3G Spectrum is allotted to them by Sept-2010, as promised by the Government during 3G & BWA Auction, Airtel will roll out services before the CY 2010. Even though Bharti Airtel fell short of Pan India 3G Spectrum, it is in talks with various operators for Roaming Arrangement so that Airtel Subscriber has seamless 3G connectivity anywhere in India.
Airtel’s Sr Executives dismissed the notion of 3G Spectrum and Back-haul crunch as they have deployed the best Network Gear as well as have laid an extensive OFC network. Current gears enable the carriers to carry higher capacity traffic as well. Airtel said that it is not facing any issues with in-sourcing of Telecom Equipment from its European Vendors as they give a Self Declaration stating the gears are free from Spyware / Malware etc and this will continue until the new norms are in place.
Other important excerpts from the Conference Call,
- Manoj Kohli is dreaming to make Airtel the most loved brand in Africa by 2015. He traveled for 2 months across Africa where Airtel has its operations meeting key executives and respective PMs / Presidents etc
- Manoj expects African market to be larger than India’s in terms of Number of Subscribers in the next decade
- Telecom Seychelles which the company acquired this morning has an EBITDA of 40%
- Airtel has five 3G licenses in the 15 countries it operates in Africa
- Airtel Undecided on BWA Choice of Technology – Airtel is weighing both WiMax and LTE-TDD for Broadband Wireless Access services. They are currently weighing the Commercials and Customer Experience both the technologies have to offer. BWA Launch is definitely after 3G, even though they have already procured the spectrum.
- CAPEX in India / South Asia is expected to be $ 2 Bn while in Africa it will be $800 Mn for FY 2011
- African Wireless Network is not as well utilized as India’s. However, they have better spectrum in Africa.
- Indian Wireless Operations managed to control the price drop and margin erosion. The company has shifted some parts of Long Distance revenues that were earlier reported in Enterprise to Mobile / Wireless as they felt it was consumer facing business and was logical to do the shift. [Oho! Ya, you realized that after 15 quarters ?] I normally don’t care for the Accounts part but Analysts seemed unhappy by the way management handled this shift.
- Airtel’s Revenue Market Share over 30% while Subscriber Market Share is at 21.5%.
- Telemedia’s [ broadband Division] Survival after Launch of 3G and BWA Services by Competitors – Bharti Airtel has clearly lagged in scaling the coverage of Wireline / DSL Broadband. The company is banking on delivering higher speed to existing users and eventually kill the 256 Kbps broadband as they believe rich media sites like YouTube etc require higher bandwidth. [Well, they certainly will kill 256 Kbps on Paper but will apply Fair Usage Policy, indirectly push you back to square one]
- Access charges have gone up in this quarter due to Government regulations.
- Waiting to hear from TDSAT challenging TRAI’s new 2G Spectrum Allocation Policy.
To summarize, the company is in Near Term Pain and hopefully Long Term Gains.