Bharti leads again in NLD and domestic ILD, in Q2

Bharti Airtel continues to dominate the
market in the NLD and the domestic ILD services segment as in the last year.
According to the statistics released by Trai, Bharti Airtel has been leading the
domestic ILD market for seven consecutive quarters since Q3, FY 2007-08 to Q2 FY
2009-10. The significant point to be noted is that the service provider has
maintained its RMS (revenue market share) at about 32% throughout this period of
hyper competition. Latest Q2 numbers show that Airtel has increased its RMS by
1% over the previous quarter.

Leveraging on 115 mn strong customer base, Bharti Airtel
clocked a revenue of Rs 1,500.96 crore in the NLD segment during the quarter
ending September 2009, while its closest competitor BSNL clocked Rs 828.56 crore,
followed by Reliance Communications with its Rs 821.08 crore. Airtel's
leadership position comes with a huge difference of 81.15% revenue higher than
its closest competitor BSNL. Vodafone and Idea Cellular rank fourth and fifth
with Rs 494.07 crore and Rs 253.3 crore revenue respectively. TTML earned Rs
249.92 crore, while TTSL clocked Rs 170.56 crore. Other players in this segment
including Aircel, Spice, AT&T, Cable & Wireless, BT, Railtel, Equant, Sify, HCL
Infinet, and Verizon clocked revenues in double digit numbers only. The total
revenues from NLD services for the quarter ending September was Rs 4,380.28
crore.

In the case of ILD services, Bharti Airtel clocked a revenue
of Rs 688.47 crore during Q2. It had a clear leadership position over its
closest competitor Reliance Communications with a huge revenue difference of
144.28%. It contributed to the total ILD revenue of Rs 2,215.27 crore in a big
way. Reliance Communications clocked Rs 281.84 crore during the quarter. BSNL
earned Rs 233.32 crore during this quarter. Foreign player, AT&T was at the top
in this category with revenue of Rs 99.35 crore, while other foreign players
like Cable & Wireless and BT earned Rs 34.38 crore and Rs 76.71 crore
respectively. Equant and Verizon reported revenues of Rs 58.88 crore and Rs
56.82 crore respectively.

Bharti Airtel took over the market leadership position in Q3,
2007-08. Today, Bharti Airtel has moved on to take a dominant leadership
position in the market-an RMS of 33% which is well ahead of the closest
operator.

The Strategy

The service provider has achieved this mainly by its all round focus on
developing its global portfolio of network and services. Any player wanting to
be in the top league needs to take care of some of the key factors like
expanding the international reach, right investments in the global cable
systems, and expansion of international points of presence (PoPs) and
interconnects with the international carriers. Airtel did just that.

Apart from this, it placed emphasis on building direct
interconnects and relationships with international operators, focusing on tier-1
and tier-2 operators of all major countries. It has signed over 400 interconnect
agreements till date for these direct interconnects. Milan Rao, CEO, global
voice, Bharti Airtel says, "Despite the hyper-competition in the Indian
wholesale market in the last two years, Airtel has emerged as a dominant leader
in both NLD and ILD space. With our investments in domestic and international
networks, global PoPs, strategic interconnects and state-of-the-art service
delivery platforms, we are now poised to extend this leadership to the global
market." He further says, "Best quality voice termination within India with the
expansion of domestic fiber network (1,13,326 RKms) and interconnects with all
domestic operators including BSNL across India have contributed to the voice
quality of our services. The number of interconnects with BSNL grew from 700
SDCAs to 1,800 SDCAs within the last two years. Coupled with this, our focus on
world-class network, customer service; and flexible, customized, and
ever-growing service offering portfolio helped us achieve this growth."

The government has recently taken a major decision to remove
various barriers, and to further liberalize the NLD and ILD licenses to
facilitate the growth of the IT and BPO services in the country. It will result
in further competition in the market, forcing operators to focus on the QoS.
With network congestion at the PoI increasing and the implementation of MNP on
the anvil, not only Bharti Airtel, but all the operators need to increase their
investment to ensure 100% QoS to retain customers.

Kannan K

kannan@cybermedia.co.in