As Reliance Communications fights everyday to service huge debt amidst challenges on Accounting practices and the paid media at work hyping Mukesh Ambani’s virtual Reliance Infotel 4G, Airtel is quietly connecting over 1,000 towers a month with 4G LTE and hopes to reach a whopping 20,000 towers by next year.
Airtel after purchasing a majority stake in JV with Qualcomm, is bullish on the TD-LTE potential and stated that no other alternative is available to connect the Indian consumer – Internet penetration, smartphone penetration, rural penetration are all less than 10%. It is also evaluating the potential of TD-FDD either, but spectrum is a
limitation on 900Mhz band.
Airtel CEO Sanjay Kapoor speaking at GSMA Mobile Expo said that the new rules of success in Telecommunications lie in,
- moving from linear voice to a multidimensional approach (data and voice)
- moving from managing experience (voice) to managing complexity
- moving from being a product centric (voice) company to a customer-centric one and
- the shift between competing to collaborating
Winners couldn’t agree more with Mr. Kapoor at the GSMA Conference 🙂