According to Bharti Airtel, it will shut down its copper infrastructure in a year and will only offer fibre-to-the home (FTTH) in the country. Besides, the telco is also aiming to offer broadband through the local cable operators (LCO) partnership model in over 1,000 cities, up from existing 120 cities.
“The broadband category is clearly seeing very strong adoption and I believe the next few years will be the time for scaling this business as the need for high-speed broadband explodes. We continue to focus on our core strategy of expansion and experience in this business,” Gopal Vittal, chief executive officer (CEO), Bharti Airtel said during the earnings call.
Airtel added 1.4 million fibre home passes during the quarter ended December 2020. Further, it added 215,000 customers in the quarter, a level of growth that has been the highest since we started this business.
Meanwhile, the telco stated that it will focus on both renewing its spectrum licenses and buying new spectrum for capacity expansion, including sub-GHz airwaves in the upcoming March 2021 auction.
Further, Gopal Vittal, said that Airtel has prepared a full plan to deal with its rival’s plans to launch subsidised smartphone. Commenting on 5G, Vittal said that the ecosystem is still in the nascent stage but it is quickly improving. 5G enabled devices contributed 4-5 per cent of the shipment in December 2020 as compared to nil in September 2020, and next 12 months will witness more shipments for 5G, he added. The CEO also said that there won’t be any material change in capex for the telco with the 5G technology coming in.
