Bharti plans joint venture with Alcatel for managed services

30 April 2009

Bharti Airtel will set up a joint venture with French telecom major Alcatel-Lucent to boost its fixed-line and broadband services in India. Alcatel-Lucent will hold a majority 74 per cent stake in the venture with Bharti holding the remainder, Bharti chief executive Manoj Kohli said.

Bharti Airtel Limited, a group company of the Sunil Bharti Mittal Group's Bharti Enterprises and one of Asia's leading integrated telecom service providers, has operations in India and Sri Lanka.

New Delhi-based Bharti controls about 24 per cent of the Indian mobile market with over 96.6 million customers, including 93.92 million mobile users, as of end March 2009.

Bharti Airtel Limited has been voted as India's most innovative company, in a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal.

Bharti Airtel is structured into three strategic business units - mobile services, telemedia services and enterprise services. The mobile business offers services in India and Sri Lanka. The telemedia business provides broadband and telephone services in 95 cities, DTH services and has recently forayed into the IPTV services.

The enterprise business provides end-to-end telecom solutions to corporate customers and national and international long distance services to carriers.