New Delhi: Airtel chief Sunil Mittal on Wednesday spoke about the need for collaboration with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio and other industry players on technologies for the future and for creating synergies in new investments.
The call — made at a public platform in the presence of Ambani, ministers and officials from the government — comes at a time when his company is engaged in a bitter battle with Jio over a host of issues, including tariffs, interconnect charges, data speed and market share. “Clearly as Mukesh pointed out, none of us can do it alone. We will all have to come together, while we compete head-on, for the benefit of customers,” Mittal said as he spoke about the growing influence of India’s telecom and IT industry globally. “We have to collaborate among ourselves, create ecosystem, use common towers, hopefully common fibre.”
Mittal started his address at the inaugural India Mobile Congress (IMC) by referring to his industry peer as, “my dear friend Mukesh Ambani and all of you” after greeting the ministers and senior government functionaries.
In his near 13-minute speech, he referred to “Mukesh” as many as five times, surprising many present in the hall. “Mukesh is putting up a lot of investment and I think other telcos are doing the same. Overall, Rs 50,000-60,000 crore is going in one year to build hard digital infrastructure. BSNL is also doing, and so are other smaller companies,” he said, as he also spoke about Airtel’s Rs 10,000-crore investment made till September this year, and plans to invest another Rs 18,000-20,000 crore.
Ambani spoke before Mittal, and also referred to him as “my good friend from the industry”. As he lauded the “unparalleled” pace at which the Indian mobile industry has grown over the past one year, Ambani spoke about new source of value and will create opportunities and prosperity for India and millions of Indians… Data is the oxygen of adigital economy.” He said that with the rapid growth in internet adoption and provision of affordable internet phones, 4G coverage in the country will become larger than the 2G coverage over the next 12 months.
Aditya Birla group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla (who controls Idea Cellular) was also scheduled to speak at the conference, but pulled out at the last moment. Idea’s CEO Himanshu Kapania and other company officials were present at the event. Vodafone Global CEO Vittorio Colao spoke through video conferencing.
IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the government is working on steps to spread the digital infrastructure across the country while providing an enabling and growthoriented environment for the industry. Telecom minister Manoj Sinha said the government is keeping a close watch on the financial stress of the telecom industry.
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