Bharti Airtel is an Indian global telecommunications services company based in New Delhi, India. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa. Airtel provides GSM, 3G and 4G LTE mobile services, fixed line broadband and voice services depending upon the country of operation. It is the largest mobile network operator in India and the third largest in the world with 365 million subscribers. Airtel was named India's second most valuable brand in the first ever Brandz ranking by Millward Brown and WPP plc.

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 adopted by several operators. Airtel's equipment is provided and maintained by Ericsson and Nokia Solutions and Networks whereas IT support is provided by IBM. The transmission towers are maintained by subsidiaries and joint venture companies of Bharti including Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers in India. 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 (1٫8¢ US)/minute.

History

In 1984, Sunil Mittal started assembling push-button phones in India, which he earlier used to import from a Taiwan company, Kingtel, replacing the old fashioned, bulky rotary phones that were in use in the country then. Bharti Telecom Limited (BTL) was incorporated and entered into a technical tie up with Siemens AG of Germany for manufacture of electronic push button phones. By the early 1990s, Bharti was making fax machines, cordless phones and other telecom gear. He named his first push-button phones as 'Mitbrau'.

International presence

Airtel is the one of the largest mobile operator in the world in terms of subscriber base and has a commercial presence in 19 countries and the Channel Islands, Baysquare Technology developed a Settlement and Reconciliation Tool (SRT) to reconcile from various data streams. The system was developed to match the calls being captured by the network elements and the calls getting rated, i.e. ensuring that operator is billing all calls its serves and also it is paying out to other operators the correct billing amounts.

Its area of operations include:

• The Indian Subcontinent:
  • Airtel India, 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
بوركينا فاسو	airtel Burkina Faso	Airtel Burkina Faso is the dominant player with 1,433,000 customers representing 50% market share.
تشاد	airtel Chad	Airtel Chad is the No. 1 operator with 69% market share.
الكونغوالديمقراطية	airtel DRC	Airtel is the market leader with almostخمسة million customers at the end of 2010.[]
الگابون	airtel Gabon	Airtel Gabon has 829,000 customers and its market share stood at 61%.
غانا	airtel Ghana	Airtel Ghana had about 1.76 million customers at the end of 2010.
الهند	airtel India	Airtel is the market leader with almost 193.4 million customers as on 30 September 2013.
كنيا	airtel Kenya	Airtel Kenya is the second largest operator and has أربعة million customers.
مدغشقر	airtel Madagascar	Airtel is the market leader in Madagascar with 39% market share and 2.5 million customers.
ملاوي	airtel Malawi	Airtel Malawi is the market leader with a market share of 72%.
النيجر	airtel Niger	Airtel Niger is the market leader with a 68% market share.
نيجريا	airtel Nigeria
الكونغو	airtel Congo B	Airtel Congo is the market leader with a 55% market share.
رواندا	airtel Rwanda	Airtel launched services in Rwanda on 30 March 2012.
سيشل	airtel Seychelles	Airtel is the leading comprehensive telecommunications services providers with over 55% market share of mobile market in Seychelles.
سيراليون	airtel Sierra Leone
سريلانكا	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.
تنزانيا	airtel Tanzania	Airtel Tanzania is the market leader with a 38% market share.
أوغندا	airtel Uganda	Airtel Uganda stands as the No. 2 operator with a market share of 38%.
زامبيا	airtel Zambia	Airtel Zambia is the market leader with 69% market share.[]
Channel Islands† :  جرزي  گـِرنسي	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 19.

Africa

منطق رئيسي: airtel Africa

Airtel Africa is a subsidiary of Indian telecommunications company Airtel, that operates in 17 countries across Africa. It operates a GSM network in all countries, providing 2G or 3G depending upon the country of operation.

Onثمانية June 2010, Bharti Airtel completed the purchase of mobile operations in 15 African countries from Zain, a Kuwaiti operator.

On 11 August 2010, Bharti Airtel announced that it would acquire Telecom Seychelles for US$62 million.

Sale to Orange

On 13 January 2016,Orange and Bharti Airtel International Wednesday inked a deal that will allow Orange's acquisition of Airtel's operations in Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone. This will bring down the number of countries where Airtel operates to 18. On 19 July 2016, Airtel completed the sale of both these operations to France-based Orange SA.^[]

Bangladesh

airtel Bangladesh Ltd. was a GSM-based cellular operator in Bangladesh. Airtel was the sixth mobile phone carrier to enter the Bangladesh market, and originally launched commercial operations under the brand name "Warid Telecom" onعشرة May 2007. Warid Telecom International LLC, an Abu Dhabi–based consortium, sold a majority 70% stake in the company to India's Bharti Airtel Limited for US$300 million.

Merger into Robi

On 16 November 2016, airtel Bangladesh was merged into Robi as a product brand of Robi Axiata, where Robi Axiata Limited is the Licensee of airtel Brand in Bangladesh.Robi at present is a joint venture between Axiata Group of Malaysia, Bharti Airtel, of India and NTT Docomo Inc., of Japan. Axiata holds 68.7% controlling stake in the entity, Bharti holds 25% while the remaining 6.3% is held by NTT Docomo of Japan.

Sri Lanka

منطق رئيسي: airtel Sri Lanka

Bharti Airtel Lanka (Pvt) Ltd is a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel Limited. Bharti Airtel has been featured in Forbes Asia's Fab 50 list, rated amongst the best performing companies in the world in the BusinessWeek IT 100 list 2007, and voted as India's most innovative company in a survey by The Wall Street Journal^[]

Airtel Lanka commenced commercial operations of services on 13 January 2009. Granted a licence in 2007 in accordance with the Sri Lanka Telecommunications Act No. 25 of 1991, it is also a registered company under the Board of Investment Sri Lanka. Under the license, the company provides digital mobile services to Sri Lanka. This is inclusive of voice telephony, voice mail, data services and GSM-based services. All of these services are provided under the airtel brand.

Channel Islands: Jersey and Guernsey

منطق رئيسي: Airtel-Vodafone

On 1 May 2007, Jersey Airtel and Guernsey Airtel, both wholly owned subsidiaries of the Bharti Group, announced they would launch mobile services in the British Crown Dependency islands of Jersey and Guernsey under the brand name Airtel-Vodafone after signing an agreement with Vodafone. Airtel-Vodafone operates a 3G network in Jersey and Guernsey.

Subscriber base

Bharti Airtel has about 303.08 million subscribers worldwide—264.58 million in India and South Asia and 50.949 million in Africa as of the end of December 2011. The numbers include mobile services subscribers in 19 countries and Indian Telemedia services and Digital services subscribers.

See also

• Bharti Enterprises
• Airtel India
• Airtel Africa
• Airtel Bangladesh
• Airtel Sri Lanka
• Airtel-Vodafone
• Airtel digital TV
• Airtel Indian Grand Prix
• Airtel Delhi Half Marathon
• Airtel Super Singer
• Telecommunications statistics in India

المراجع

وصلات خارجية

مشاع الفهم فيه ميديا متعلقة بموضوع Bharti Airtel.

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