Telecom Lead India: India’s #1 telecom operator Airtel will focus more on revenue generation than telecom Capex this year.
For instance, Airtel is going to lower its Capex in India this year. This will be a big blow for telecom equipment vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, ZTE, Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, Cisco, etc.
Airtel’s total Capex for telecom infrastructure in FY 2014 will be around $2.2 billion against $2.5 billion in FY 2013.
Out of this, $1.6 billion will be invested in India and South Asia and $600 million in Africa.
In Q4 FY 2013, Airtel’s total Capex was about $650 million.
In India, the Capex will be focused on 3G network expansions and filling the gaps in the 2G network.
For Airtel, the main priority is to grow its revenue much faster than the telecom industry in India.
Gopal Vittal, joint managing director and CEO, Bharti Airtel, said, during an analyst meet, recently: “Industry revenues have fallen to 6-6.5 percent. In the contexts of the investments that need to be made to support 3G networks, 2G as well, clearly the single most important objective is to actually grow our revenues.”
“Grow our revenues faster is really our focus and that means we will get smarter around, more quality acquisitions, moving up the realization of voice, growing data and really winning with some of our most valuable customers,” Vittal said, in his first quarterly meet, after taking over as the India CEO.
For Airtel, waste elimination is a top priority. The mobile operator is looking at every element of waste – deployment of capital, operating expense, etc.
Airtel has 13 3G licenses and 8 4G licenses in India. In India data customers now represent at least 23 percent of the base. 3G-customer growth was over a 135 percent year-on-year.
Bharti Airtel, promoted by billionaire Sunil Mittal, is also happy about its 3G and 4G growth.
“A year ago we were sitting here saying 3G is not growing as much.3G is actually growing by leaps and bounds and so, I am very optimistic about the future of this. We are a part of the global consortium trying to actually grow the TD-LTE as a spectrum band,” Vittal added.
