Bharti Airtel chair Sunil Mittal (pictured) called on governments and regulators to allow consolidation to give mobile players the incentive to invest heavily in new infrastructure and partner with satellite operators.
Mittal insisted it’s not the time to fight with each other but to work together. “We have a mission to finish the job of covering the last 400 million people,” highlighting satellite service is the solution to filling coverage gaps.
Regarding consolidation, he insisted it is time to embrace each other, share and compete in the marketplace. “Compete on the strength of your brands, your services, but don’t try to compete by building solo capital infrastructure.”
He asked: “How many fibre highways are enough? How many duplicate towers are enough?”
India had 12 operators at its peak. Spectrum was fragmented, small networks were being built, he said. “Everybody was chasing urban, lucrative areas at the cost of rural,” which disparately required coverage.
The country is now down to three, giving operators the necessary scale. “We have 4G and 5G coverage in every corner of the country.”
Mittal also urged authorities to lower taxes and allocate sufficient spectrum at affordable costs.
While average industry revenue growth is around just 2 per cent, he stated year after year operators face demands to buy expensive spectrum, putting $200 billion into capex annually.
The chair said he hopes this message will resonate with industry stakeholders, and “we will start to reset our industry”.
“This is one industry that is bearing the burden of building out the digital infrastructure across the globe. How much is this industry taking the load itself? The return on capital is just an average of 4 per cent.”
Source: Mobile World Live
