Mittal to storm telecom with $8-bn investment

Striving to retain the lead position in the mobile industry, Bharti Airtel will invest a massive $8 billion by 2010 for a 25%market share.

"By 2010, estimates are that India will have 400-500 million subscribers. Bharti strives to retain up to 125 million or 25% of the market," group chairman Sunil Mittal said.

The expansion programme assumes importance in the wake of imminent entry of global mobile leader Vodafone through acquisition of Hutch-Essar. After the Vodafone announcement, Mittal had said Bharti would continue to be the numero uno in India.

The company, since its inception, has planned an investment of about $8 billion (about Rs 36,000 crore) for various services, including mobile, basic, national and international long-distance, undersea cable and broadband services.

“We are spending nearly $2 billion every year as the future (in terms of creation of infrastructure) continues to be stronger than the past... by 2010, we would have doubled the investment. We had put up about 10,000 base stations by 2005-end, another 10,000 by 2006 and this year (2007-08) we would add about 20,000,” Mittal said.

Stating that Bharti had about 34-35 Million subscribers, Mittal said, based on the annualised figure of the last quarter, revenue would be touching $4 billion (Rs 18,000 crore) this year and could double by 2010.

Asked whether Bharti would continue to invest in telecom at the same pace, Mittal said his company had been doubling infrastructure (base stations) every year and by March next year, it would have 40,000 base stations. But the number of towers to be added in the 2008-09 fiscal will be fewer than what has been added until now.

“I may add 30,000 towers in 2008-09. So, for the first time, we will see fewer number of towers coming in than what we did in the past. So, that is the time you start getting some ease on the investment side,” Mittal said.