User base: Airtel No 10 in the world

Sunil Mittal-owned Bharti Airtel became the first Indian telecom company on Monday to join the world's top 10 operators, with its customer base crossing the 50-million mark in mobile, broadband and wireline services. "Our next target is to reach 100 million mark by 2010," Bharti Airtel President and CEO Manoj Kohli said.

The 50 million customers span mobile, broadband and fixed telephone services, with wireless segment estimated to be contributing as much as 96 per cent (47.99 million) of the total base.

However, exact figures for the mobile additions in the month of September would be provided by Cellular Operators Association of India in a couple of days.

Bharti Airtel has been adding over two million subscribers every month and had 46.8 million subscribers by the end of August, 2007. Company's Joint Managing Director Akhil Gupta said: "Most of the susbcribers from the next 50 million would come

from rural areas."

With this, Average Revenues Per User may fall but it would not decline drastically, he said.

"By acquiring subscribers in rural areas, ARPUs may fall but the usage and revenues increase, so it is not a cause of concern," Gupta added.

For increasing our penetration in the rural areas, we would follow a different strategy which may include providing local content in various languages, simpler tariffs among other things, he added.

The company also plans to make considerable investments in network expansion to establish presence in all towns and over five lakh villages across India by 2010, thereby covering 95 per cent of the the country's total population. It also plans to start DTH operations by the end of the current fiscal.

However, Bharti did not reveal further details of the DTH venture. The company would also start its operations in Sri Lanka by the end of March 2008, Kohli said.