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| Edited By: Nivedita Mookerji |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 30, 2018, 02:22 AM IST
Top management of Bharti Airtel including Manoj Kohli, Sanjay Kapoor, and Manik Jhangiani spoke to the media on Friday after the company declared its third quarter financial result.
Surprisingly, Akhil Gupta, group CEO, Bharti Enterprises, who’s a regular at the post-result interactions, stayed away. Kohli will take over as the CEO, international business, from April, while Kapoor will take charge as Bharti Airtel CEO. CFO Jhangiani has just joined the company. Excerpts from the media interaction:
On subscriber addition in the telecom sector:
Real monthly customer addition in the telecom sector is 8-9 million, as against 15-16 million announced by the industry. Only around 75% of the telecom market is the real customer base, while the remaining are multi-SIM holders.
Why Bharti Airtel’s pre-paid churn was at an all- time high of 6.5% in Q3, up from 2.9% in the corresponding period last year..
Besides new players offering low tariffs, ban on pre-paid mobile in J&K and IMEI guideline also resulted in the churn. We will know the factual position after three quarters or so.
On the low tariff trend in the telecom sector:
The longevity of these (low) tariffs will be based on how long you have an appetite for losses.
On listing of Infratel and Indus:
We will take a decision on whether to list them after evaluating our March 2010 financial results.
On whether Bharti was interested in Aircel towers:
We were among those in the race for Aircel towers. We did not see any value in it.
On rural focus:
Around 60% of our net subscriber addition comes from rural India.
On direct-to-home (DTH) business:
Bharti has been getting 25% of the new DTH customers in India. The company’s last 1 million DTH subscribers have come in the past five months.
On minutes of usage:
We have had 9.5 billion of new minutes in the third quarter of this financial year. It could have been around 10.5 billion, but ban on pre-paid mobile in Jammu & Kashmir and IMEI norms were a hindrance.
On the latest acquisition, Warid of Bangladesh:
We just bought a 70% stake in Warid. With teledensity of only 32%, Bangladesh offers a great opportunity for us to grow.
On the market buzz on Bharti looking at US-based Sprint:
It is a big no.
On the geographies that Bharti is interested in when it comes to international business:
International business is a long-term plan of the company. We can’t give out specifics. But, we are interested in the emerging markets.
On launch of 3G services:
Diwali launch looks unlikely now as one would need a few months after spectrum allocation to start the service.
On whether 5MHz per operator would be enough for 3G:
5MHz in the first tranche would be good enough for both voice and data. After two to three years, this would, however, be (fully) utilised.
On telecom wishlist for the Budget:
We want the taxes lowered. Currently, 31 paise for every rupee goes to the government.
