Bharti To Launch Service by 27th Dec in Haryana

Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and group managing director, Bharti Enterprises has indicated that its basic services in Haryana will start around 27th December, 2001 and in Delhi in the month of February, 2002. The Haryana launch has been delayed primarily due to inter-connect problems with BSNL. The company has received the numbering plan yesterday and is planning to get point of inter-connect soon.The first private company in the country to start telecom services, Bharti today offers cellular services in Delhi, Karnataka, AP, Chennai, HP, and Calcutta, and currently has about 15 lakh subscribers.

Sounding very upbeat, Mittal said that "telecom has not really been affected by the current slowdown, as the cellular industry is adding about 2.5 lakh subscribers every month. In fact I expect cellular to grow at the rate of about 10 lakh subscribers every month, starting next year". About the impending IPO, Mittal said that financial institutions are flush with funds, and fund managers are loooking where to put the money. For us IPO is not the end but the beginning".

Bharti is Rs 1,028 crore group having operations in the areas of cellular, basic services, national long distance, submarine cable, ISP, broadband, VSAT and customer premise equipment manufacturing.