Bharti Airtel Limited, commonly known as Airtel, is an Indian telecommunications services company headquartered at New Delhi, India.

It operates in 20 countries across South Asia, Africa and the Channel Islands. Airtel has GSM network in all countries in which it operates, providing 2G, 3G and 4G services depending upon the country of operation. Airtel is the world's third largest mobile telecommunications company with over 261 million subscribers across 20 countries as of August 2012 behind China Mobile and China Unicom. It is the largest cellular service provider in India, with 183.61 million subscribers as of November 2012. Bharti Airtel is the first Indian telecom service provider to achieve Cisco Gold Certification. It also acts as a carrier for national and international long distance communication services. The company has a submarine cable landing station at Chennai, which connects the submarine cable connecting Chennai and Singapore. 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 copied by several operators. Its networkbase stations, microwave links, etc.is maintained by Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Network whereas business support is provided by IBM, and transmission towers are maintained by another company (Bharti Infratel Ltd. 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/minute (US$0.02/minute). During the last financial year (200910), Bharti negotiated for its strategic partner Alcatel-Lucent to manage the network infrastructure for the tele-media business. On 31 May 2012, Bharti Airtel awarded the three-year contract to Alcatel-Lucent for setting up an Internet Protocol access network (mobile backhaul) across the country. This would help consumers access internet at faster speed and high quality internet browsing on mobile handsets.

History :
1976 Sunil Mittal started bicycle parts factory in home town Ludhiana. Mittal is a man raised in the heart of Indian politics, who built a telecom giant in an economy just opening after decades

of relative isolation. He is also a man who learned the value of long hours and precision in Japan, who came to appreciate strong engineering and high-quality design in Germany, and who flipped outsourcing trends on their head by looking to European companies to run his networks. Sunil Mittal founded the Bharti Group. In 1983, Mittal was in an agreement with Germany's Siemens to manufacture push-button telephone models for the Indian market. In 1986, Mittal incorporated Bharti Telecom Limited (BTL), and his company became the first in India to offer push-button telephones, establishing the basis of Bharti Enterprises. By the early 1990s, Sunil Mittal had also launched the country's first fax machines and its first cordless telephones. In 1992, Mittal won a bid to build a cellular phone network in Delhi. In 1995, Mittal incorporated the cellular operations as Bharti Tele-Ventures and launched service in Delhi. In 1996, cellular service was extended to Himachal Pradesh. In 1999, Bharti Enterprises acquired control of JT Holdings, and extended cellular operations to Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. In 2000, Bharti acquired control of Skycell Communications, in Chennai. In 2001, the company acquired control of Spice Cell in Calcutta. Bharti Enterprises went public in 2002, and the company was listed on Bombay Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange of India. In 2003, the cellular phone operations were rebranded under the single Airtel brand. In 2004, Bharti acquired control of Hexacom and entered Rajasthan also signed outsourcing deal with Nokia & Ericssion. Outsourcing allowed Bharti Airtel to scale up very quickly, Mittal says, and focus on distribution, brand, innovation in services, and collection. He emphasizes that the outsourcing was done for practical, not financial, reasons and that all of the companys networks remain on the books. In 2005, Bharti extended its network to Andaman and Nicobar. This expansion allowed it to offer voice services all across India. In 2009, Airtel launched its first international mobile network in Sri Lanka. In March 2010, Bharti struck a deal to buy the Zain's mobile operations in 15 African countries, in India's second biggest overseas acquisition after Tata Steel's $13 billion buy of Corus in 2007.

Bharti Airtel completed its $10.7 billion acquisition of African operations from Kuwaiti firm, making the Airtel the world's fifth largest wireless carrier by subscriber base. On 18 May 2010, the 3G spectrum auction was completed and Airtel paid the Indian government 122.95 billion (US$2.24 billion) for spectrum in 13 circles, the most amount spent by an operator in that auction. In March 2012,Airtel launched a mobile operation in Rwanda. On 24 May 2012, Airtel announced an agreement to acquire a 49% stake in Qualcomm Asia Pacific (India). Qualcomm holds 4G spectrum and licenses in Delhi, Haryana, Kerala and Mumbai. Today, Airtel is the largest cellular service provider in India and the fourth largest in the world. Worldwide presence : Airtel is the first largest mobile operator in the world in terms of subscriber base and has a commercial presence in 20 countries and the Channel Islands. Its area of operations include:

The Indian Subcontinent: o Airtel Bangla, in Bangladesh o Airtel, in India o Airtel Sri Lanka, in Sri Lanka Airtel Africa, which operates in 17 African countries: o 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.

What about in 10 years? In an Interview by Sunil Mittal :: IN 10 YEARS, I expect the Group to be a successful conglomerate. I have no doubt that Bharti will have internationalized itself within that period and, therefore, I will have spent a lot of time looking at overseas businesses. A founder remains a founder, and whatever job one ends up doing, one is more or less in the same position as the head of the Group. The good news on our front is that we have professionalized our business to a point where it is easy to separate shareholder and managerial responsibility.

3G
On 18 May 2010, the 3G spectrum auction was completed and Airtel paid the Indian government 122.95 billion (US$2.24 billion) for spectrum in 13 circles, the most amount spent by an operator in that auction. Airtel won 3G licences in 13 telecom circles of India: Delhi, Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh (East), Rajasthan, West

Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, North East, and Jammu & Kashmir.[23] Airtel also operates 3G services in Maharastra & Goa and Kolkata circles through an agreement with Vodafone and in Gujarat through an agreement with Idea. This gives Airtel a 3G presence in 15 out of 22 circles in India. On 20 September 2010, Bharti Airtel said that it had given contracts to Ericsson India, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Huawei Technologies to set up infrastructure for providing 3G services in the country. These vendors would plan, design, deploy and maintain 3GHSPA (third generation, high speed packet access) networks in 13 telecom circles where the company had won 3G licences. While Airtel awarded network contracts for seven 3G circles to Ericsson India, NSN would manage networks in three circles. Chinese telecom equipment vendor Huawei Technologies was introduced as the third partner for three circles.[24] On 24 January 2011, Airtel launched 3G services in Bangalore, Karnataka its largest circle by revenue. With this launch, Airtel became the third private operator (fifth overall) to launch its 3G services in the country following Tata Docomo and Reliance Communications.[25] On 27 January 2011, Airtel launched 3G in Chennai and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. On 27 July 2011, 3G services were launched in Kerala's 3 largest cities - Kochi, Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram.[26] Airtel 3G services are available in 200 cities through its network and in 500 cities through intracircle roaming arrangements with other operators. Airtel had about 5.4 million 3G customers of which 4 million are 3G data customers as of September 2012.[20]

4G
On 19 May 2010, the broadband wireless access (BWA) or 4G spectrum auction in India ended. Airtel paid 33.1436 billion for spectrum in 4 circles: Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab and Kolkata. The company was allocated 20 MHz of BWA spectrum in 2.3 GHz frequency band. Airtel's TD-LTE network is built and operated by ZTE in Kolkata, Huawei in Karnataka, Ericsson in Punjab and Nokia Siemens Networks in Maharashtra.[28] On 10 April 2012, Airtel launched 4G services using TD-LTE technology in Kolkata, becoming the first company in India to offer 4G services. The Kolkata launch was followed launches in Bangalore (7 May 2012)[29] and Pune (18 October 2012).[30] It will launch services next in Chandigarh.[31] On 24 May 2012, Airtel announced an agreement to acquire a 49% stake in Qualcomm Asia Pacific (India). Qualcomm holds 4G spectrum and licenses in Delhi, Haryana, Kerala and Mumbai. As per the agreement, by the end of 2014, Airtel will assume full ownership and financial responsibility for 4G operations in these 4 circles.[32] Airtel had 3180 4G subscribers as of May 2012.[33]

Airtel Money
Airtel has started a new mCommerce platform called Airtel Money in collaboration with Infosys and SmartTrust (now Giesecke & Devrient). The platform was launched on April 5,

2012, at Infosys' headquarters in Bangalore. Using Airtel Money, users can transfer money, pay bills and perform other financial transactions directly on the mobile phone. [35]

SmartDrive
SmartDrive is navigation app exclusive to Airtel customers. The app features voice-based turn by turn navigation, real time information update on traffic, approximate time of the travel on the basis of the traffic situation on the various routes and also lets users see their location on the map and plan the journey accordingly. It also suggests the subscriber an alternate route in case of traffic congestion on the normal route. According to Airtel, SmartDrive calculates the traffic on the basis of the number of GPS devices used on a particular road, their average speed, as well as historical trends of traffic on that route. SmartDrive also allows users to search for points of interest like restaurants, theatres and shopping malls. The app also allows users to keep a record of all trips they make when using voice navigation for later reference through the 'Trip Recorder' feature, Wikipedia information of places for which information is available and the ability to add frequently visited locations to favorites, in addition to weather information about the place. The app is developed by Wisepilot, a mobile navigation solutions provider and uses Navteq Maps for location and traffic info.[36] It was launched on 12 September 2012.[37] At the time of launch, it was available only in Bangalore, Mumbai and NCR.[38] Services are currently available in Chennai.[39] Service will be expanded to Pune and Hyderabad by December 2012.

Network Experience Centre

Airtel has a Network Experience Centre (NEC) which observes end to end customer experience, in near real time, along with the standard network elements on Airtel's operations. The NEC is located in in Manesar, Haryana and went live on 31 October 2012. It is the first such facility in India and will be able to monitor Airtel's network performance across mobile, fixed line, broadband, DTH, M-Commerce, enterprise services, International Cable Systems and internet peering points from a single location. It will monitor all Airtel and partner NOCs. In case of an emergency, the NEC will enable the operator to prioritize actions to restore normalcy and reduce resolution time. The NEC houses a video wall with 3600 square feet of solid state LED screen to monitor Airtel's telecom network. This is the world's biggest video wall for a telecom operator. Each cube in this wall is 1.6mx1.2 m and there are 175 cubes arranged in a 25x7 matrix. The clear span of the roof is 49 m x 18 m and the beams, which are fireproof and about 8 feet deep, have been specially designed to hold the structure without columns. The NEC was designed specifically to be used as a command center in case of national emergencies and natural catastrophes. The facility is earthquake proof and also provides for a single control of command and a fully redundant technology layout.

Digital Television

The Digital TV business provides Direct-to-Home (DTH) TV services across India under the brand name Airtel digital TV. It started services on 9 October 2008 and has about 7 million customers as of August 2012

Enterprise
The Enterprise business provides end-to-end telecom solutions to corporate customers and national and international long distance services to telcos through its nationwide fiber optic backbone, last mile connectivity in fixed-line and mobile circles, VSATs, ISP and international bandwidth access through the gateways and landing stations. It has two sections under it.

Subscriber Base
Bharti Airtel has about 243.336 million subscribers worldwide232.95 million in India and South Asia and 50.949 million in Africa as of the end of December 2012. The numbers include mobile services subscribers in 19 countries and Indian Telemedia services and Digital services subscribers.

India
The Airtel wireless subscriber base according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) as of November 2012 was: Metros

Delhi 9,083,718 Mumbai 3,494,074 Kolkata 3,606,616 Chennai 3,428,293

"A" Circle

Andhra Pradesh 18,041,904 Gujarat 6,927,459 Karnataka 16,044,964 Maharashtra 9,849,973 Tamil Nadu 10,094,293

"B" Circle

Haryana 2,267,166 Kerala 3,393,868 Madhya Pradesh 9,675,239 Punjab 6,851,338 Rajasthan 14,385,762

Uttar Pradesh (East) 15,105,455 Uttar Pradesh (West) 6,556,052 West Bengal 9,084,371

"C" Circle

Assam 3,809,218 Bihar 18,527,460 Himachal Pradesh 1,915,405 Jammu and Kashmir 2,300,268 North East India 2,551,134 Orissa 6,696,681

One Network
One Network is a borderless mobile phone network across all Airtel operating countries which enables customers to move freely between the countries in which Airtel operates, and be treated as virtual local customers of the visited network in terms of pricing, while retaining their home network service functionality. It is the worlds first free intercontinental incoming roaming service. Airtel customers in Africa not need to register for the One Network service or buy new SIM cards as the is enabled automatically. One Network allows customers traveling to One Network countries to make outgoing calls/SMS at the same rates as local customers and recharge with local top-up cards or with home network top up cards while using the same number and SIM. Receiving incoming calls is free.[54] Airtel offers the service currently to its Africa customers traveling to any of the following 27 countries. In 8 of these countries, the One Network is operated in partnership with other mobile operators. Airtel plans to extend the service to its South Asia customers soon. S. No. Country Network 1 Burkina Faso Airtel 2 Bangladesh Airtel 3 Chad Airtel 4 Channels Islands: Jersey and Guernsey Airtel 5 Democratic Republic of the Congo Airtel 6 Gabon Airtel 7 Ghana Airtel 8 India Airtel 9 Kenya Airtel 10 Madagascar Airtel 11 Malawi Airtel 12 Niger Airtel 13 Nigeria Airtel

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Republic of the Congo Sierra Leone Seychelles Sri Lanka Tanzania Uganda Bahrain Iraq Jordan Kuwait Saudi Arabia Sudan South Africa Egypt

Airtel Airtel Airtel Airtel Airtel Airtel Zain Zain Zain Zain Zain Zain Cell C Mobinil

Telecom Seychelles
On August 11, 2010, Bharti Airtel announced that it would acquire 100% stake in Telecom Seychelles for US$62 million taking its global presence to 19 countries. Telecom Seychelles began operations in 1998 and operates 3G, Fixed Line, ship to shore services satellite telephony, among value added services like VSAT and Gateways for International Traffic across the Seychelles under the Airtel brand. The company has over 57% share of the mobile market of Seychelles.[60] Airtel announced plans to invest US$10 million in its fixed and mobile telecoms network in the Seychelles over three years, whilst also participating in the Seychelles East Africa submarine cable (SEAS) project. The US$34 million SEAS project is aimed at improving the Seychelles global connectivity by building a 2,000 km undersea high speed link to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

Corporate Structure:
Airtel's initial corporate structure concentrated on the hierarchy of the operations inside the company as a whole. The structure depicted the corresponding operation/region of different incharges and it didn't hold anyone responsible for each of its services. So, the company found it better to restructure its corporate hierarchy. The transformed organisational structure has two distinct Customer Business Units (CBU) with clear focus on B2C (Business to Customer) and B2B (Business to Business) segments. Bharti Airtel's B2C business unit will comprehensively service the retail consumers, homes and small offices, by combining the erstwhile business units - Mobile, Telemedia, Digital TV, and other emerging businesses (like M-commerce, M-health, M-advertising etc.). The B2C organization will consist of Consumer Business and Market Operations.The organisation have changed the style of the company as the company do nat have any brand logo till the time.

Bharti Airtel announces new organisation structure for its India and South Asia operations New structure to drive the next phase of companys growth Creation of B2C and B2B business verticals for enhanced business efficiency and employee value Transformation from a technology facing organisation structure to a customer facing one Will provide enhanced empowerment to employees The new structure, which is effective August 1, 2011, is aimed at driving greater business and functional synergies, providing a common interface to customers, and creating a de-layered and more agile organization. In addition, the new structure will provide more meaningful, empowered roles and enhance employee engagement.

The transformed organisation structure will have two distinct Customer Business Units (CBU) with clear focus on B2C (Business to Customer) and B2B (Business to Business) segments. Bharti Airtels B2C business unit will comprehensively service the retail consumers, homes and small offices, by combining the erstwhile business units - Mobile, Telemedia, Digital TV, and other emerging businesses (like M-commerce, M-health, M-advertising etc). The B2C organization will consist of Consumer Business and Market Operations. The Consumer Business group will lead the overall B2C strategy and will focus on customer experience, product and service innovation (including data, VAS, new products/services), and build an ecosystem around the B2C services. Market Operations group will lead the go-to-market strategy. This vertical will take products and services to customers in South Asia with speed and efficiency. Market Operations will complement the Consumer Business by building a robust go-to-market ecosystem and leverage Bharti Airtels vast distribution reach. The B2B business unit will continue its focus on serving large corporate and carriers through Bharti Airtels wide portfolio of telecommunication solutions.

Bharti Airtel announces new organization structure for India operations in 2013 : The Company has outlined a new hub organization design for its India operations. Instead of the current 3 regional hubs, the organization will now be divided into 8 hub operations reporting to a newly created position of Director - Market Operations. Circle CEOs who report in to a Hub CEO will continue to operate with the same level of independence. The Hub CEO will provide overall guidance and oversight to the Circles under it.