Airtel Picks Alcatel-Lucent for Managed Services, Tops 96 Million Mobiles

Bharti Airtel and Alcatel-Lucent have formed a joint venture to manage Bharti Airtel's pan-India broadband and telephone services and help Airtel's transition to next generation networks. A new legal entity is being formed which will be operated by Alcatel-Lucent.



Under the joint venture, Alcatel-Lucent will design, plan, deploy, optimize and manage Bharti Airtel's broadband and telephone network across India. This managed services partnership will include all end-to-end activities -- service rollout, installation and fault repair, service continuity and transformation. It will support Bharti Airtel's transformation to next generation networks, offering advanced services like high-speed internet, triple play, media-rich VAS, MPLS, VPN for both retail and business customers. The partnership will also drive optimal capital investment and increase operational efficiency by moving voice and data traffic onto a single, 'packetized' infrastructure.


Separately, Bharti Airtel reported earlier this week that it now has over 96 million mobile users. The company's consolidated total revenues for the quarter ended March 31, 2009 of Rs. 9,825 crore grew by 26% and EBITDA of Rs. 4,001 crore grew by 23% on a year on year basis. Bharti Airtel estimates that it holds a 24% market share of all India wireless subscribers. This market share figure is up from 23.7% corresponding to the same period of last year.
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