Retail News CRM

Tag: airtel

  • 211 operators globally investing in 5G

    211 operators globally investing in 5G

    At least 211 operators across 87 countries are investing in 5G, according to statistics compiled by consultancy company Hadden Telecoms.

    Operators investing in 5G are at a variety of stages, ranging from network deployments, to technology testing, demonstrations and pilot trials.

    To date, 15 operators have commercially launched 5G services, including Telstra and Optus in Australia, which are offering fixed wireless 5G services on the 3.6-GHz band. Vodafone Australia and the market’s national broadband network operator NBN Co are also investing in 5G.

    South Korea’s KT, LG U+ and SK Telecom meanwhile switched on their 3.5-GHz 5G networks last year, initially for enterprise customers only, and are planning to simultaneously launch commercial services for consumers shortly.

    The list of operators investing in 5G in Asia Pacific also includes China’s big three operators China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, Hong Kong’s 3 Hong Kong, China Mobile Hong Kong, HKT and SmarTone, and India’s Bharti Airtel, BSNL and Reliance Jio Infocomm.

    In Japan, KDDI, NTT Docomo, Rakuten Mobile and Softbank are spending heavily on 5G, while Malaysia’s Celcom, DiGi, Maxis, Telekom Malaysia and U Mobile and the Philippines’ Globe and PLDT are also trialing the technology.

    Singapore’s M1, Singtel and StarHub, Sri Lanka’s Dialog Axiata and Mobitel, Taiwan’s APT, Chunghwa Telecom, Far EasTone and Taiwan Mobile, Thailand’s AIS, Dtac, TOT and TrueMove and Vietnam’s Viettel are also at various stages of 5G development.

    “Operators globally are preparing for the large-scale introduction of 5G, the first services have launched, and the devices ecosystem is rapidly building and poised for the imminent scale availability of a range of smartphone models,” Hadden Telecoms director Alan Hadden said.

    “Dozens more operators are expected to launch their respective 5G services in the coming 12 months.”

    Lees ook:

  • Airtel, TTSL could be hit with $2.15b bill over merger

    Airtel, TTSL could be hit with $2.15b bill over merger

    India’s Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices may need to pay nearly 150 billion rupees ($2.15 billion) in spectrum charges to the government to clinch approval for their planned merger.

    The Department of Telecom is preparing to issue the demand as a condition for granting approval for the merger, unnamed DoT officials told.

    The expected bills will cover unpaid license fees, spectrum usage charges and a one-time spectrum reallocation charge. It will include a 120 billion rupee charge for Bharti Airtel and a 28 billion rupee charge for Tata Teleservices.

    DoT approval is the last remaining major hurdle that the companies will need to clear to approve of the merger, which was announced in 2017. The deal has already been signed off on by the National Company Law Tribunal.

    According to the report, license fees, which will be based on adjusted gross revenue, may further add to the cost.

    But the department is already expecting the operators to appeal the one time spectrum charges with the Telecom Disputes Settlements and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT).

    The operators may also potentially seek to block DoT’s efforts to demand spectrum usage charges based on the legal uncertainty over the definition of an operator’s adjusted gross revenue, against which annual license fees are calculated.

    Lees ook:

  • Singtel to invest a further $536m in Bharti Airtel

    Singtel to invest a further $536m in Bharti Airtel

    Singtel Group has revealed plans to subscribe to Bharti Airtel’s 250 billion rupee ($3.57 billion) right issue, taking up its full entitlement for its direct stake of 15%.

    Airtel will take up 170 million new shares at an issue price of 220 rupees per share for a total of 37.5 billion rupees ($535.7 million).

    Airtel major shareholder Bharti Group has also committed to taking its full entitlement under the issue, while fellow major shareholder Bharti Telecom has renounced part of its entitlement in favor of Singapore sovereign investment fund GIC Singapore, which will invest around 50 billion rupees.

    The major shareholders and GIC have together committed a total of 67% of the rights issue. The renunciation to GIC will take Singtel’s effective interest in Airtel to 35.2%, with the operator maintaining its position as Airtel’s largest shareholder.

    “Our participation in this rights offering with our partners and a leading investor such as GIC reflects our long-standing commitment to Airtel and the confidence in the future of the Indian market,” Singtel International CEO Arthur Lang said.

    “Airtel has performed well despite business headwinds and is consolidating its position in a more sustainable market. Our partnership with Airtel spans some two decades and we continue to take a long-term view of India, having recently invested in Bharti Telecom and Airtel Africa.”

    Lees ook:

  • Airtel taps Ciena for high-speed backbone network

    Airtel taps Ciena for high-speed backbone network

    India’s Bharti Airtel has contracted Ciena to deploy a large-scale photonic control plane backbone network that will connect more than 4,000 towns across the nation.

    Under the agreement, announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the companies will collaborate to deploy a network spanning 130,000km.

    The network deployment, which the companies said will be one of the world’s largest photonic control plane deployments, forms part of Airtel’s Project Leap network transformation program.

    Airtel plans to use the network to serve exploding demand for high-speed data services, and to enable the delivery of high-speed broadband to end users over 4G/5G/FTTH architectures.

    For retail and enterprise customers, the network will also support bandwidth on demand, optical VPNs, latency based routing and dynamic data center interconnection.

    Airtel CTO Randeep Sekhon said the backbone architecture will be capable of working with data rates of 400Gbps and higher, and delivering low-latency software-controlled connectivity for cloud infrastructure.

    “Airtel has always pioneered the introduction of cutting-edge network technologies to serve its customers. We are pleased to work with Ciena to build one of world’s largest optical spine and leaf networks, which is also a big step towards 5G readiness by leveraging our huge fiber assets,” he said.

    “This will not only scale our network for massive capacity but also protect traffic and enhance service delivery to all our customers. It will also help Airtel further strengthen its position as a key enabler of digital experiences in an increasingly connected world.”

  • Indian telco sector facing three more quarters of losses

    Indian telco sector facing three more quarters of losses

    India’s telecoms sector is facing at least three more quarters of losses due to the ongoing price war, according to industry body the Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI).

    The Indian GSM industry body’s director general Rajan Mathews told that he believes the market’s current tariffs are unsustainable in the long term.

    The industry’s woes are being added to by high license fee and spectrum charges, including high upfront payments, which has guaranteed that the current fiscal year will be tough for the industry.

    The current situation commenced in 2016 when disruptive new entrant Reliance Jio Infocomm entered the market with entirely free services during an extended promotion period. The operator continues to charge only for data, at low rates.

    Jio’s strategy prompted established operators to cut prices to compete, and prompted a wave of consolidation that has seen the market reduced to just three private operators – Jio, Bharti Airtel and the combined Vodafone India and Idea Cellular (now Vodafone Idea).

    Mathews said that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and clarity I expected to emerge in the fiscal year 2019-2020, which begins in April next year.

    But he warned that if tariffs continue to decline it will be detrimental to the health of the industry as it will threaten operators’ ability to invest in emerging technologies and in expanding coverage.

    Lees ook:

  • Bharti Airtel buys AI startup AuthMe

    Bharti Airtel buys AI startup AuthMe

    Indian telecoms operator Bharti Airtel has acquired AuthMe ID Services (AuthMe), a Bengaluru-based start-up focused on artificial intelligence (AI) based solutions, in a bid to bloster its AI portfolio.

    Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

    As part of the deal, the core team of AuthMe will join Airtel and be a part of Airtel X Labs in Bengaluru.

    Airtel set up Airtel X Labs to drive innovation in the areas of AI, IoT, AR and VR and is “building a world-class team” for the facility, the operator said in a statement released on Wednesday.

    “We are thrilled to bring on board a bunch of highly talented people who share our passion for building exciting digital solutions that benefit our customers,” Bharti Airtel global CIO Harmeen Mehta said.

    “We are rapidly scaling up Airtel X Labs, our digital innovation factory, and these new solutions will accelerate our journey towards rolling out intuitive digital products, particularly in vernacular languages, for our 430 million plus customers.”

    In addition, Airtel has acquired the intellectual proprietary rights for two flagship solutions developed by AuthMe.

    One of the solutions is called Callup AI, which has created a chat and voice assistant that uses AI to quickly and effectively resolve customer queries over email, chat and phone calls. The solution is used by 10 companies across three countries in banking, finance, payments and housing domains.

    The other solution, the “Fintech OCR”, is an end to end Optical Character Recognition (OCR) pipeline built for financial documents. The application is designed for processing KYC docs, bank/credit card/loan statements, mark sheets, and can be customized to process known formats of other documents. It can pick up any language with standard fonts, Airtel said.

    In a separate announcement, Airtel said it has launched its VoLTE services to Bengal and Sikkim to enable customers in all towns across the two states to enjoy HD quality voice calls with faster call setup time.

    Lees ook:

  • India’s DoT approves Airtel-Telenor India merger

    India’s DoT approves Airtel-Telenor India merger

    India’s Department of Telecom (DoT) has approved the planned merger between Telenor India and Bharti Airtel, which will create an operator with a subscriber base of around 334 million.

    The department has signed off on the merger after being directed to by the Supreme Court.

    The DoT had petitioned the court seeking to compel the operators to submit a security deposit of around 17 billion rupees ($251.6 million) before approving the merger. This deposit would cover unpaid spectrum fees from Telenor and a one-time spectrum charge on Airtel for the spectrum that the operator will acquire through the merger without an auction.

    But the court has dismissed the petition and instructed the department to approve the merger.

    With the acquisition, Airtel will acquire an additional 43.4 MHz of spectrum in the 1800-MHz band, spread across seven of India’s 22 telecoms circles.

    The company will also absorb Telenor’s subscriber base in these circles, which will leave the incumbent operator with nearly twice as many subscribers as new entrant Reliance Jio Infocomm.

    As a condition of approval, Airtel has been instructed to reduce its market share based on adjusted growth revenue in the Bihar telecoms circle to the limit of 50% within one year of completing the merger.

    Norway-based Telenor is meanwhile fulfilling its goal of exiting the Indian market due to the intense competition and the high cost of spectrum.

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • Airtel sell 25% of its African unit

    Airtel sell 25% of its African unit

    India’s Bharti Airtel reportedly plans to raise up to $1.5 billion through a public listing of Bharti Airtel International, the holding company for its African operations.

    The operator plans to dilute a 25% stake into the holding company for roughly $1 billion to $1.5 billion.

    The public listing is expected to take place in early 2019, the sources said. At the upper end of the estimate, Bharti Airtel International would be valued at $6 billion.

    Netherlands-registered Bharti Airtel International is the holding company of Airtel’s operations in 14 African markets – Nigeria, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Madagascar, Niger, Kenya, Malawi, Seychelles, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Rwanda.

    Airtel’s African operations have finally started making profits seven years after Airtel entered the African market with the $9 billion acquisition of Kuwait-based Zain’s African assets. The African operations reported their first full year of profit for the financial year of around 18.27 billion rupees ($273.4 million).

    A global listing for Bharti Airtel International is expected to help the parent company get better value for its African operations, deleverage its balance sheet, and help it raise funds to invest in its core Indian mobile business to help it better compete in a tight market.

  • Bharti Airtel launches wholesale voice digital platform

    Bharti Airtel launches wholesale voice digital platform

    India’s Bharti Airtel has launched what it says is a first-of-its-kind carrier digital platform for wholesale voice services.

    The new Global Voice service will allow global operators to enter wholesale voice arrangements with Airtel at the click of a button.

    The platform will offer paperless sign-up, quick voice interconnects and real-time traffic analysis for carriers worldwide.

    Customers will be able to buy voice termination services from Airtel and propose sell rates for their target markets.

    Airtel said Global Voice can reduce on-boarding time to a matter of hours. It also offers live rates for routes across the world for faster decision making during traffic exchange.

    Users will also be able to access various real-time online reports based on usage analytics tracking KPIs such as traffic, traffic rates and payments for a selected destination.

    Airtel also plans to soon provision a single window on the digital platform for product discovery, on-boarding, billing, payment, enquiry, and support across multiple B2B products.“

    “This is yet another digital innovation from Airtel to empower our customers, who can now leverage Airtel’s global voice network on a real-time basis with high quality voice termination,” Airtel director and CEO for global voice and data Ajay Chitkara said.

    “The platform will bring enhanced efficiency, convenience, agility and transparency and further strengthen our position as the preferred partner for customers across the world.”

    Airtel’s worldwide network covers 250,000 route kilometers across 50 countries in five continents and already terminates 23 billion voice minutes globally.

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • Bharti Infratel to merge with Indus Towers

    Bharti Infratel to merge with Indus Towers

    India’s Bharti Airtel has approved a plan to merge its infrastructure unit Bharti Infratel with Indus Towers to create a listed pan-India tower company.

    The combined company will fully own the respective business of Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers, and will own over 163,000 towers across all 22 of India’s telecom circles, making it the largest tower company in the world outside of China. It will change its name to Indus Towers Limited.

    Bharti Airtel already owns a 42% stake in Indus Towers, with Vodafone Group owning another 42%, Idea Group owning 11.15% and Providence Equity Partners owning the remaining 4.85%.

    Post-merger, Vodafone will be issued 783.1 million new shares in the combined company, while Idea Group will be given the option of selling its shares in the company or taking shares based on the merger ratio, and Providence will be given the option of selling most of its holdings.

    Assuming Idea and Providence take up the option of selling their shares for cash, Airtel’s shareholding in the combined company will be diluted to 37.2% and Vodafone’s shareholding would be diluted to 29.4%.

    The combined company is expected to have an enterprise value of around $10.8 billion, Airtel said in a statement.

    Based on this expected valuation, Idea stands to gain around $1 billion from the sale of its shares. Vodafone’s holding in the combined company would meanwhile be worth around $4.3 billion.

    The merger is expected to be complete in the current financial year, which ends in March 2019.

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • Airtel Q4 profit slumps 78% due to price war

    Airtel Q4 profit slumps 78% due to price war

    India’s Bharti Airtel has reported a steep 78% slump in net profit for the March quarter to 830 million rupees ($12.5 million), partly as a result of the industry’s ongoing price war.

    Revenue for the quarter fell 5.4% year-on-year to 196.3 billion rupees, with revenue from India falling 7.5% to 147.96 billion rupees on an underlying basis.

    India mobile revenues fell 13.5% due to the stiff competition, but Airtel increased its customer base by 4.9% from the previous quarter to 273.6 million.

    Revenue from Airtel’s African operations by contrast grew 10.7% year-on-year, with data traffic up 88%, voice minutes increasing by 37% and customer net additions increasing 11.5% to 84.13 million.

    During the quarter, Airtel expanded its operations to Rwanda with the purchase of Tigo Rwanda.

    For the full year, Airtel’s total revenue fell 9.8% to 836.8 billion rupees and its net income fell 71.1% to 10.99 billion rupees.

    “The [Indian] telecom industry continues to witness below cost, artificially suppressed pricing. Industry revenues were further adversely impacted this quarter due to the reduction in international termination rates,” Airtel CEO for India and South Asia Gopal Vittal said.

    “Airtel continued to consolidate its leadership position this quarter. Our strategic investments in data capacities, innovative digital content through Airtel TV, customer friendly bundles and upgrade programs led to the highest ever mobile data customer additions of 15 million during the quarter. Usage parameters remained robust–on a YOY basis, we saw data and voice traffic grow 584% and 55% respectively.”

  • Airtel-Tata Teleservices merger good for the industry

    Airtel-Tata Teleservices merger good for the industry

    The planned merger between Bharti Airtel and Tata Teleservices’ consumer mobile business is a positive for both the deal participants and the industry as a whole, according to Fitch Ratings.

    Airtel announced last week that it plans to absorb Tata Teleservices’ consumer mobile business as well as its spectrum assets in the 850-MHz, 1800-MHz and 2100-MHz bands.

    Because the merger is being conducted on a cash and debt free basis, with Airtel only required to take on certain additional spectrum expenses, the deal is expected to slightly improve Airtel’s credit profile, Fitch Ratings said.

    It is also expected to help arrest the decline in Airtel’s ebitda and bolster its 4G network position.

    “Bharti will gain about 178.5 MHz of spectrum in the 850-MHz, 1800-MHz and 2100-MHz bands in 17 Indian telecom coverage areas, the right to use Tata Telecom’s extensive fiber network and 42 million subscribers that will add to its existing Indian subscriber base of 281 million,” Fitch Ratings said in a research note.

    “We estimate the consumer mobile business of Tata Telecom generated revenue of around $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion and a small [positive] ebitda in FY17, compared with Bharti’s revenue of $14.7 billion and ebitda of $5.4 billion. Bharti’s revenue market share will increase by 4-5 percentage points to around 37%-38%.”

    Tata Group will meanwhile be able to exit the consumer mobile segment, avoiding potential future losses. The group’s consumer mobile business been a drain on the company’s profit for some time. The company plans to retain Tata Teleservices’ enterprise fixed line and broadband business.

    Finally, the deal marks another move towards industry consolidation in India’s formerly overcrowded mobile market, Fitch noted.

    “[This consolidation] has been accelerated by the entry of aggressive new operator Reliance Jio. Since Jio’s launch in September 2016, the industry has consolidated into three large operators from over 10 participants,” the company said.

    “Weaker telcos have had to exit the market by selling their operations to the stronger telcos, which have had to rethink their long-term plans.”

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook:

  • Airtel to buy Tata Group’s consumer mobile business

    Airtel to buy Tata Group’s consumer mobile business

    India’s Bharti Airtel has agreed to acquire Tata Teleservices’ consumer mobile businesses as part of the wave of consolidation sweeping the sector.

    Under the agreement, Airtel will absorb Tata Teleservices’ consumer mobile businesses across 19 of India’s 22 telecoms circles, the Economic Times reported.

    The acquisition has been approved by the boards of Airtel, Tata Sons, Tata Telervices and Tata Teleservices Maharashtra.

    It will cover all customers and assets of Tata’s consumer mobile business, including 178.5 MHz of spectrum across the 850-MHz, 1800-MHz and 2100-MHz bands. It will also provide Airtel with a right to use part of Tata’s fiber network.

    According to the report, the merger is being conducted on a debt and cash free basis, but Airtel will assume part of Tata’s unpaid spectrum acquisition debt.

    The deal is a lifeline for Tata Group, which had been considering shutting down Tata Teleservices altogether due to ongoing losses. The company will split off and retain ownership of Tata Teleservices’ enterprise fixed line and broadband business.

    The company is in initial stages of exploring combining this enterprise business with Tata Communications and its retail fixed line and broadband business with Tata Sky. Tata also plans to retain its stake in tower company Viom Networks.

    Lees ook:

  • Airtel, Idea fail to gain stay on IUC cut

    Airtel, Idea fail to gain stay on IUC cut

    India’s Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular have failed to secure a court injunction on a  recent regulatory decision to slash and eventually abolish the interconnection usage charge (IUC).

    The two operators petitioned the Bombay High Court seeking an order to halt the implementation of

    regulator Trai’s order to reduce the IUC to 6 paise ($0.001) per minute from the current 14 paise.

    But the court declined to grant the stay  before the cut took effect yesterday. The court has nevertheless agreed to hear the operators’ arguments against the cut next month.

    Trai revealed last month  that the IUC will be cut starting this month, and will be abolished altogether from the start of 2020.

    The move has the potential to cost incumbent operators up to a combined 50 billion rupees ($765.5 million) in revenue annually, and to benefit newcomer Reliance Jio by the same amount, although Jio has denied that it stands to gain from the decision.

    Lees ook:

  • Airtel Q1 profit shrinks 75% on strict competition

    Airtel Q1 profit shrinks 75% on strict competition

    India’s Bharti Airtel has reported a steep 75% decline in first quarter profit as a result of the intense competition triggered by the entry into the market of Reliance Jio Infocomm.

    Net profit fell to 3.67 billion rupees ($56.9 million), marking the Indian incumbents third straight quarter of declining income.

    Revenue meanwhile fell 2.6% to 255.46 billion rupees, with India revenue down 10% to 172.44 billion rupees, driven by a 14.1% decline in mobile revenues to 129.15 billion rupees.

    By contrast, African revenues grew 1.5% year-on-year in constant currency terms. But African mobile revenues fell to 48.53 billion from 62.49 billion a year earlier.

    The steep decline was felt despite the operator increasing its total customer base by 6.2% to 379.9 million across 17 countries. In India, the operator also reported a record 5.2 million customer increase in data subscriber base during the quarter.

    “The pricing disruption in the Indian telecom market caused by the entry of a new operator [Jio] continued with industry revenues declining over 15% YoY, creating further stress on

    sector profitability, cash flows and leverage,” Airtel CEO for India and South Asia Gopal Vittal commented.

    “Consequently, our [Indian] revenues declined 10% and EBITDA margin eroded by 5.3% YoY. We remain committed to providing the best value & experience to our customers and continue to invest towards it. As a result, our network witnessed data and voice traffic growth of 200% and 34% YoY respectively.”

    Lees ook:

    Lees ook: