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Bharti cuts mobile tariffs in Delhi

Telecoms provider Bharti Tele-Ventures said on Thursday it had cut mobile call tariffs in the New Delhi market in a bid to retain its leading position in an increasingly competitive sector.

The capital is the largest market for cellular services in India with the subscriber base surging to 1.2 million users in June, a jump of 80 per cent from a year ago.

Apart from Bharti, which says it has 55 per cent of the market, state-run Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd and Hutchison Whampoa's Indian unit offer cellular services in Delhi.

"We are definitely going to ensure that we price-protect our customers," Sarvjit Dhillon, chief executive officer at Bharti's network for Delhi, told Reuters. "At the same time we want to retain our leadership in Delhi through product innovation."

The New Delhi-based Bharti Tele-Ventures is the key holding company of telecoms conglomerate Bharti Enterprises. It runs 10 mobile networks and has licences to start five more GSM networks.

From July 13, Delhi users of Bharti's cellular service, which operates under the brandname of Airtel, will see their rentals coming down to between Rs 245 and Rs 495 per month in the three plans, as against Rs 249-1,200 earlier.

Users would now pay between Rs 0.50-to-2.40 per minute for incoming calls as against Rs 1.48-4.0 earlier.

Similarly outgoing calls would cost Rs 0.50-to-2.50 compared with Rs 1.48-to-4.0 per minute.

"Overall the user is looking at a reduction in rates by between 15-to-30 per cent," Dhillon said.

The loss-making firm expects its mobile footprint to cover 600 million subscribers, or nearly 92 per cent of the nation's mobile subscriber potential, once all its networks are running.

That would give a footprint rivalled only by China Mobile and China Unicom in the region.

India's $5.0-billion mobile phone sector -- billed as one of the world's fastest growing markets -- has drawn massive investment from private equity players and global telecom giants battling saturated demand in most western markets.

There are around 6.5 million subscribers in India compared with nearly 150 million users in neighbouring China.

Research firm Gartner estimates the Indian cellphone market to expand at a compounded annual growth rate of 46 per cent over the next five years to 2006.

Bharti ended 2.56 per cent higher at Rs 36 on the Bombay Stock Exchange, whose main index closed 0.20 per cent up.

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