Bharti Airtel

Bharti breaks previous records for quarterly subscriber growth

Singapore, 4 February 2008 -- Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) today announced that the Group’s combined mobile subscriber base in the region has reached 171.54 million as at 31 December 2007.

Its mobile subscriber base in the eight markets – Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – went up by 53 per cent from 112.28 million customers a year ago. The latest figure was boosted by the addition of Warid Telecom’s 13.21 million subscribers in Pakistan in the quarter.

Record net-adds propelled Bharti’s subscriber base past 50-million mark

Bharti, the largest regional mobile associate in terms of the number of mobile subscribers, continued to grow exponentially. It broke its previous net additions records by attracting 6.29 million mobile subscribers in the quarter. As at 31 December 2007, it has enlarged its total subscriber base to 55.16 million mobile subscribers.

Continued healthy subscriber growth from other markets

Jersey Airtel, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bharti Group, has today announced it will launch its mobile services on the Island of Jersey under the brand name “Airtel-Vodafone” after signing an agreement with Vodafone, the world’s leading mobile telecommunications group. The agreement will see Vodafone’s leading global products and services available on the island for the very first time.

Customers of Airtel-Vodafone will be able to benefit from a range of Vodafone services, tailored to the needs of Jersey customers, both at home and when traveling in the UK and across the world, including Vodafone Passport, a simple roaming price plan. Airtel-Vodafone services will also include a mobile multimedia service; Vodafone Simply, a straightforward voice and data package and the Vodafone Mobile Connect Card for laptops which makes possible wireless internet access. These Vodafone products, together with other exciting services, will be brought to customers in Jersey by Airtel on a phased basis from launch.

In addition, business customers stand to benefit from a range of competitive corporate devices and services, including BlackBerry from Vodafone.

BlackBerry 8800 is a standout mobile solution for business professionals

Airtel and Research In Motion (RIM) today introduced the sleek, elegant and performance-driven BlackBerry® 8800 - a powerful, feature-rich smartphone that delivers best-in-class technology in a thin and stylish design. At only 14mm deep, the BlackBerry 8800 is the thinnest BlackBerry handset yet. Priced at Rs.31,990/, it is now available from Airtel.

The quad-band and EDGE-enabled BlackBerry 8800 incorporates built-in GPS (Global Positioning System) – a first-of-its-kind for BlackBerry smartphones in India – a full QWERTY keyboard, RIM’s new trackball system for fast and intuitive navigation, a media player, and a microSD expandable memory slot for storing music and videos.

BlackBerry 8800

The BlackBerry 8800 also offers many proven and popular features, including support for phone, email, text and instant messaging, web browser, organiser, multimedia, corporate data applications and more.