Ahmedabad, Bharti Airtel one of the Asias leading integrated telecom service provider was recognised as the Best telecom company in Gujarat at the 3rd edition of GESIA Annual awards, given away in Ahmedabad recently. Airtel was chosen for this award from among the leading telecom companies that currently operate in the state of Gujarat.

Commenting on this achievement, Shivan Bhargava, COO, Bharti Airtel - Gujarat Circle said, Airtel is dedicated to continually improving the service experience for our customers and receiving this award is a testament to our commitment and efforts. Our extensive services portfolio enables us to offer innovative and best-in-class propositions for our customers. We thank GESIA and our customers for recognising us as the best telecom company in the state. We have a special focus on the youth and the rural segment and will continue to find newer ways to engage successfully with them.

Congratulations to Bharti Airtel for the much deserved win. Growth of the company and connectivity to all villages in Gujarat needs to be acknowledged and this is what brand Airtel stands for said Mr. Nirav Shah, President, Gesia

Some of the competitive differentiators that contributed to Airtels recognition as the best Telecom Company award are:

   1. Airtel is the only service provider in Gujarat to offer Mobile, Broadband, DTH services and VSAT based solutions to their customers in Gujarat.

   2. The company has built up an extensive cellular network for providing world-class mobile service to the people of Gujarat, by putting up more than 5600 towers, by serving all census towns and more than 12100 villages and 248 towns.

    3.Airtel covers about 94% of Gujarats population with a customer base of 5.27mn in Gujarat.

    4. The Airtel e-Gram connectivity infrastructure project is the largest e-governance rural connectivity initiative at the village level. Under this project, Airtel partnered with the Government of Gujarat and set up telecom infrastructure which provides a comprehensive VSAT based solution, connecting panchayats and Common Service Centers (CSCs) across 13716 villages in the state.

    5. Airtel has a cumulative investment of Rs 2,490 crores in Gujarat as of January 2009.

    6. Airtel Telemedia provides all types of internet service, broadband service, fixed land line service, lease line service, bandwidth services and ISDN services at Ahmedabad and Surat. The total customer base at Ahmadabad and Surat is around 50 K with a turnover of 370 Mn. The company has employed around 80 employees to handle its telemedia affairs in Gujarat.

   7. The company offers Direct to Home (DTH) services covering all the districts and cities in the State. The company provides employments to 138 employees including indirect employees. In Gujarat, the company provides its DTH services to around 1.5 Lakh customers as on December, 2009.

Notes to Editor

About Bharti Airtel :

Bharti Airtel Limited, a group company of Bharti Enterprises, is among Asias leading integrated telecom services providers with operations in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. In South Asia, the company had an aggregate of over 131 million customers as of end January 2010, including 121.7 million mobile customers in India. Bharti Airtel has been ranked among the six best performing technology companies in the world by BusinessWeek.

Bharti Airtel is structured as four strategic business units - Mobile, Telemedia, Enterprise and Digital TV. The mobile business offers services in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The Telemedia business provides broadband, IPTV and telephone services in 95 Indian cities. The Enterprise business provides end-to-end telecom solutions to corporate customers and national and international long distance services to carriers. The Digital TV business provides DTH services across India. All these services are provided under the Airtel brand. Airtels national high-speed optic fibre network currently spans over 118,337 Rkms across India. Airtels international network infrastructure includes ownership of the i2i submarine cable system and consortium ownership in five global undersea cable systems, SEA-ME-WE