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Telecom primed for a revolution: Sunil Mittal

Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman, Bharti Enterprises, expects the telecom industry to witness a revolution in the coming days.

He sees the number of mobile phone users in India rising to 50 million by 2005. Excerpts from an interview with Business Standard in Bhopal:

How do you seen Bharti Enterprises doing?

We have been registering a growth of 70 per cent every year. I hope the growth will continue for another decade.

If I translate it in terms of turnover, we will attain a turnover of Rs 32 billion this fiscal on a sales of Rs 2.25 billion per month.

After Bharti’s tremendous success in telecom, are there any plans to diversify?

I don’t think so. I have been in this business for years and I wanted to be attached with my customers/subscribers. Also, the telecom sector is registering good growth despite recession in other sectors.

I expect that by 2005 there will be 50 million mobile phone users in India. I do not see any reason to switch over to other businesses.

What are the reasons for the fact-paced growth of the industry?

This is an industry which is related to the younger generation. They are the real customers who decide about the value addition the industry has to provide. I see youngsters using mobile phones and Internet in various applications. In the days to come, there will be a revolution in the telecom industry.

You launched mobile phone services in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. What’s in store for the competition?

Whenever a new player enters a market, he triggers fresh competition. We have slashed pulse rate from 60 seconds to 30 seconds. We will soon announce our post-paid tariff and our competitors will face new challenges which they cannot even think of.

What are your growth targets?

At present I am aiming at attaining a subscriber base of 100,000 for mobile phone and 225,000 subscribers for fixed line phones in Madhya Pradesh where we had launched our services in 1996.

The glitches over rural telephony still remain unsolved. The government has threatened to cancel the licences of fixed line operators if they fail to meet targets in rural areas. How do you respond?

If the government wants to cancel licenses I do not have any problem. If this is the reward for our contribution for a state like Madhya Pradesh, I do not have any complaints.

I have proposed to implement rural telephony through satellite phones or wireless in local loop phones, but the government must ask those players who have paid less fee and have no similar obligations.

There should be a level-playing field. I have installed village public telephones and I will continue to do that, but there should be some justification in the demand from the government.

There’s then the issue of quality of services.

We want to make our services of similar quality anywhere in India. Our billing system, call centres, phone services, messaging and any kind of services will have the same quality across India. We are developing the technology.

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