RESEARCH REPORT

On
MARKETING STRATEGY OF AIRTEL

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the

award of the degree of
Master of Business Administration
Session 2017-18

Submitted To Submitted By
Mr. Niraj Dubey Ram Babu
(H.O.D.) Roll No.1666670260
MBA- 4th SEM.
Under Guidance of :
Akash Jaiswal
(Assisitant Prof.)

SRM BUSINESS SCHOOL

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.
 DECLARATION
This is to declare that I Ram Babu student of MBA, have personally worked

on the project entitled MARKETING STRATEGY OF AIRTEL The data

mentioned in this report were obtained during genuine work done and

collected by me. The data obtained from other sources have been duly

acknowledged. The result embodied in this project has not been submitted to

any other University or Institute for the award of any degree.

Date: `

Place: Lucknow
Ram Babu
Roll No.1666670260
MBA- 4th SEM.

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENT
A project is never the sole product of a person whose name has appeared on the cover. Even
the best effort may not prove successful without proper guidance. For a best project one
needs proper time, energy, efforts, patience, and knowledge and how to use all these things.
But without any guidance it remains unsuccessful. I have done this project with the best of
my ability and hope that it will serve its purpose. It was really a great learning experience and
I would really express my special and profound gratitude to my guide Mr. Neeraj Dubey. who
not only helped me in the successful completion of this report but also spread her precious
and valuable time in expanding my knowledge base, I take immense pleasure in thanking her
for supporting at all stages of this project. After the completion of this Project I feel myself as
a well aware person about the Research Procedure and the complexities that can arose during
the process. Also I got an insight of airtel. Finally, I am also grateful to all those personalities
who have helped me directly or indirectly in bringing up this project report.
I would also like to thank Mr. Head of Department for his regular support and help in the
successful completion of my research report.

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 PREFACE
I respect to the allotted period, I have formed relationship with the organization as trainee
but informally it is a sacred place for me as it’s my first practical exposure to an organization
to know and get aware to an organizational real practical stressful environment.
Although I am student of M.B.A Lucknow. It is a two year full time degree courses.
So far this training is scheduled for third semester syllabi as a separate topic to be asked in
detail in viva-voice conducted by external So far I have completed 3nd semester examination.
Thus study will provided me a better opportunity to survive in cut throat competition with a
prosperous existence. I have tried my best to gain out of well framed circumstances & with
the help of experienced personnel who helped me out so for become possible to them. As
being a very confidential functioning many things are there which can’t be known but on the
basis of gathered information and certain hints, the project has been formed. It may have
something missing but I have tried to present all things what I have received. Although this
report has been got checked by different personnel but after that if there is some
shortcomings I expect it to be rectified. So the whole study bifurcated in different parts.
Certain observations & suggestions also have been stated which if possible to be reviewed.

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 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
While working in the organization I was trained as a relationship personnel being engaged
into various jobs such as dealing with clients, answering customer queries through telephonic
conversations and providing them knowledge about new schemes and converting them into
our customers.
As my summer internship project I was given the topic on “consumer satisfaction of
Airtel”. The project work was for this research was conducted in Lucknow to study the
customer satisfaction level.
The research has been conducted to gather information from 100 respondents & a structured
questionnaire will be used to collect the information from the respondents. The data which
was collected from them will be analyzed and classified. It was found that though the Airtel
has the highest market share it needs to improve on its service quality and retail services.

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 TABLE OF CONTENT

Chapters Page Nos.

1. Introduction
2. Company Profile
3. Objectives of the study
4. Research Methodology
5. Limitations
6. Data Analysis & Interpretations
7. Findings
8. Suggestions/Recommendations
9. Conclusion
10. Bibliography
11. Appendix

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 INTRODUCTION
Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how

products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation.
Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers, or percentage of total
customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings)
exceeds specified satisfaction goals."[1] In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers,
71 percent responded that they found a customer satisfaction metric very useful in managing
and monitoring their businesses.

It is seen as a key performance indicator within business and is often part of a Balanced

Scoretwo wheelerd. In a competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers,
customer satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator and increasingly has become a key
element of business strategy.

"Within organizations, customer satisfaction ratings can have powerful effects. They focus
employees on the importance of fulfilling customers' expectations. Furthermore, when these
ratings dip, they warn of problems that can affect sales and profitability.... These metrics
quantify an important dynamic. When a brand has loyal customers, it gains positive word-of-
mouth marketing, which is both free and highly effective."

Therefore, it is essential for businesses to effectively manage customer satisfaction. To be

able do this, firms need reliable and representative measures of satisfaction.

"In researching satisfaction, firms generally ask customers whether their product or service
has met or exceeded expectations. Thus, expectations are a key factor behind satisfaction.
When customers have high expectations and the reality falls short, they will be disappointed
and will likely rate their experience as less than satisfying. For this reason, a luxury resort,
for example, might receive a lower satisfaction rating than a budget motel—even though its
facilities and service would be deemed superior in 'absolute' terms."

The importance of customer satisfaction diminishes when a firm has increased bargaining

power. For example, cell phoneplan providers, such as AT&T and Verizon, participate in an
industry that is an oligopoly, where only a few suppliers of a certain product or service exist.
As such, many cell phone plan contracts have a lot of fine print with provisions that they

7
would never get away if there were, say, 100 cell phone plan providers, because customer
satisfaction would be far too low, and customers would easily have the option of leaving for
a better contract offer.

There is a substantial body of empirical literature that establishes the benefits of customer
satisfaction for firms.

Purpose

A business Airtel two wheelerlly is continually seeking feedback to improve customer

satisfaction.

"Customer satisfaction provides a leading indicator of consumer purchase intentions and

loyalty."  "Customer satisfaction data are among the most frequently collected indicators of
market perceptions. Their principal use is twofold:" 

1. "Within organizations, the collection, analysis and dissemination of these data send a
message about the importance of tending to customers and ensuring that they have a
positive experience with the company's goods and services."
2. "Although sales or market share can indicate how well a firm is performingcurrently,
satisfaction is perhaps the best indicator of how likely it is that the firm’s customers
will make further purchases in the future. Much research has focused on the
relationship between customer satisfaction and retention. Studies indicate that the
ramifications of satisfaction are most strongly realized at the extremes."

On a five-point scale, "individuals who rate their satisfaction level as '5' are likely to become
return customers and might even evangelize for the firm. (A second important metric related
to satisfaction is willingness to recommend. This metric is defined as "The percentage of
surveyed customers who indicate that they would recommend a brand to friends." When a

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customer is satisfied with a product, he or she might recommend it to friends, relatives and
colleagues. This can be a powerful marketing advantage.) "Individuals who rate their
satisfaction level as '1,' by contrast, are unlikely to return. Further, they can hurt the firm by
making negative comments about it to prospective customers. Willingness to recommendis a
key metric relating to customer satisfaction."

Theoretical Ground

"In literature antecedents of satisfaction are studied from different aspects. The
considerations extend from psychological to physical and from normative to positive aspects.
However, in most of the cases the consideration is focused on two basic constructs as
customers expectations prior to purchase or use of a product and his relative perception of the
performance of that product after using it.

Expectations of a customer on a product tell us his anticipated performance for that product.
As it is suggested in the literature, consumers may have various "types" of expectations when
forming opinions about a product's anticipated performance. For example, four types of
expectations are identified by Miller (1977): two wheelerl, expected, minimum tolerable, and
desirable. While, Day (1977) indicated among expectations, the ones that are about the costs,
the product nature, the efforts in obtaining benefits and lastly expectations of social values.
Perceived product performance is considered as an important construct due to its ability to
allow making comparisons with the expectations.

It is considered that customers judge products on a limited set of norms and attributes.
Olshavsky and Miller (1972) and Olson and Dover (1976) designed their researches as to
manipulate actual product performance, and their aim was to find out how perceived
performance ratings were influenced by expectations. These studies took out the discussions
about explaining the differences between expectations and perceived performance." 

The Disconfirmation Model

"The Disconfirmation Model is based on the comparison of customers’ [expectations] and

their [perceived performance] ratings. Specifically, an individual’s expectations are
confirmed when a product performs as expected. It is negatively confirmed when a product
performs more poorly than expected. The disconfirmation is positive when a product
performs over the expectations(Churchill & Suprenant 1982). There are four constructs to

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describe the traditional disconfirmation paradigm mentioned as expectations, performance,
disconfirmation and satisfaction." [3] "Satisfaction is considered as an outcome of purchase
and use, resulting from the buyers’ comparison of expected rewards and incurred costs of the
purchase in relation to the anticipated consequences. In operation, satisfaction is somehow
similar to attitude as it can be evaluated as the sum of satisfactions with some features of
product."  "In the literature, cognitive and affective models of satisfaction are also developed
and considered as alternatives(Pfaff, 1977). Churchill and Suprenant in 1982, evaluated
various studies in the literature and formed an overview of Disconfirmation process in the
following figure:" 

Customer satisfaction measured

Organizations need to retain existing customers while targeting non-customers. Measuring

customer satisfaction provides an indication of how successful the organization is at
providing products and/or services to the marketplace.

"Customer satisfaction is measured at the individual level, but it is almost always reported at
an aggregate level. It can be, and often is, measured along various dimensions. A hotel, for
example, might ask customers to rate their experience with its front desk and check-in
service, with the room, with the amenities in the room, with the restaurants, and so on.
Additionally, in a holistic sense, the hotel might ask about overall satisfaction 'with your
stay.'"

As research on consumption experiences grows, evidence suggests that consumers purchase

goods and services for a combination of two types of benefits: hedonic and utilitarian.
Hedonic benefits are associated with the sensory and experiential attributes of the product.
Utilitarian benefits of a product are associated with the more instrumental and functional
attributes of the product (Batra and Athola 1990).

Customer satisfaction is an ambiguous and abstract concept and the actual manifestation of
the state of satisfaction will vary from person to person and product/service to
product/service. The state of satisfaction depends on a number of both psychological and
physical variables which correlate with satisfaction behaviors such as return and recommend
rate. The level of satisfaction can also vary depending on other options the customer may
have and other products against which the customer can compare the organization's products.

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Work done by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (Leonard L) between 1985 and 1988
provides the basis for the measurement of customer satisfaction with a service by using the
gap between the customer's expectation of performance and their perceived experience of
performance. This provides the measurer with a satisfaction "gap" which is objective and
quantitative in nature. Work done by Cronin and Taylor propose the
"confirmation/disconfirmation" theory of combining the "gap" described by Parasuraman,
Zeithaml and Berry as two different measures (perception and expectation of performance)
into a single measurement of performance according to expectation.

The usual measures of customer satisfaction involve a survey from software providers such
as Confirmit, Medallia andSatmetrix[8] with a set of statements using a Likert Technique or
scale. The customer is asked to evaluate each statement and in term of their perception and
expectation of performance of the organization being measured. Their satisfaction is
generally measured on a five-point scale.

"Customer satisfaction data can also be collected on a 10-point scale."[1]

"Regardless of the scale used, the objective is to measure customers’ perceived satisfaction
with their experience of a firm’s offerings." It is essential for firms to effectively manage
customer satisfaction. To be able do this, we need accurate measurement of satisfaction.

Good quality measures need to have high satisfaction loadings, good reliability, and low
error variances. In an empirical study comparing commonly used satisfaction measures it was
found that two multi-item semantic differential scales performed best across both hedonic
and utilitarian service consumption contexts. According to studies by Wirtz & Lee (2003),
[11]
 they identified a six-item 7-point semantic differential scale (for example, Oliver and
Swan 1983), which is a six-item 7-point bipolar scale, that consistently performed best across
both hedonic and utilitarian services. It loaded most highly on satisfaction, had the highest
item reliability, and had by far the lowest error variance across both studies. In the study,
[11]
the six items asked respondents’ evaluation of their most recent experience with ATM
services and ice cream restaurant, along seven points within these six items: “pleased

11
me to displeased me”, “contented with to disgusted with”, “very satisfied with to very
dissatisfied with”, “did a good job for me to did a poor job for me”, “wise choice to poor
choice” and “happy with to unhappy with”.

A semantic differential (4 items) scale (e.g., Eroglu and Machleit 1990),[12] which is a four-
item 7-point bipolar scale, was the second best performing measure, which was again
consistent across both contexts. In the study, respondents were asked to evaluate their
experience with both products, along seven points within these four items:
“satisfied to dissatisfied”, “favorableto unfavorable”, “pleasant to unpleasant” and “I like it
very much to I didn’t like it at all”.

The third best scale was single-item percentage measure, a one-item 7-point bipolar scale
(e.g., Westbrook 1980).[13]Again, the respondents were asked to evaluate their experience on
both ATM services and ice cream restaurants, along seven points within
“delighted to terrible”.

It seems that dependent on a trade-off between length of the questionnaire and quality of
satisfaction measure, these scales seem to be good options for measuring customer
satisfaction in academic and applied studies research alike. All other measures tested
consistently performed worse than the top three measures, and/or their performance varied
significantly across the two service contexts in their study. These results suggest that more
two wheelereful pretesting would be prudent should these measures be used.

Finally, all measures captured both affective and cognitive aspects of satisfaction,
independent of their scale anchors.[11]Affective measures capture a consumer’s attitude
(liking/disliking) towards a product, which can result from any product information or
experience. On the other hand, cognitive element is defined as an appraisal or conclusion on
how the product’s performance compared against expectations (or exceeded or fell short of
expectations), was useful (or not useful), fit the situation (or did not fit), exceeded the
requirements of the situation (or did not exceed).

Methodologies

American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is a scientific standard of customer

satisfaction. Academic research has shown that the national ACSI score is a strong predictor
of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, and an even stronger predictor of Personal

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Consumption Expenditure (PCE) growth.[15] On the microeconomic level, academic studies
have shown that ACSI data is related to a firm's financial performance in terms of return on
investment (ROI), sales, long-term firm value (Tobin's q), cash flow, cash flow
volatility, human capital performance, portfolio returns, debt financing, risk, and consumer
spending. Increasing ACSI scores has been shown to predict loyalty, word-of-mouth
recommendations, and purchase behavior. The ACSI measures customer satisfaction
annually for more than 200 companies in 43 industries and 10 economic sectors. In addition
to quarterly reports, the ACSI methodology can be applied to private sector companies and
government agencies in order to improve loyalty and purchase intent. [19] ASCI scores have
also been calculated by independent researchers, for example, for the mobile phones
sector, higher education, and electronic mail.

The Kano model is a theory of product development and customer satisfaction developed in

the 1980s by Professor Noriaki Kano that classifies customer preferences into five categories:
Attractive, One-Dimensional, Must-Be, Indifferent, Reverse. The Kano model offers some
insight into the product attributes which are perceived to be important to customers.

SERVQUAL or RATER is a service-quality framework that has been incorporated into

customer-satisfaction surveys (e.g., the revised Norwegian Customer Satisfaction Barometer
to indicate the gap between customer expectations and experience.

J.D. Power and Associates provides another measure of customer satisfaction, known for its
top-box approach and automotive industry rankings. J.D. Power and Associates' marketing
research consists primarily of consumer surveys and is publicly known for the value of its
product awards.

Other research and consulting firms have customer satisfaction solutions as well. These
include A.T. Kearney's Customer Satisfaction Audit process,[24] which incorporates the
Stages of Excellence framework and which helps define a company’s status against eight
critically identified dimensions.

For B2B customer satisfaction surveys, where there is a small customer base, a high response
rate to the survey is desirable.[25] The American Customer Satisfaction Index (2012) found
that response rates for paper-based surveys were around 10% and the response rates for e-
surveys (web, wap and e-mail) were averaging between 5% and 15% - which can only
provide a straw poll of the customers' opinions.
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In the European Union member states, many methods for measuring impact and satisfaction
of e-government services are in use, which the eGovMoNet project sought to compare and
harmonize.

These customer satisfaction methodologies have not been independently audited by

the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) according to MMAP (Marketing
Metric Audit Protocol).

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 CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
Consumer behavior is the study of when, why, how, where and what people do or do not
buy products. It blends elements from psychology, sociology, social psychology,
anthropology and economics. It attempts to understand the buyer decision making process,
both individually and in groups. It studies characteristics of individual consumers such as
demographics and behavioural variables in an attempt to understand people's wants. It also
tries to assess influences on the consumer from groups such as family, friends, reference
groups, and society in general. Customer behaviour study is based on consumer buying
behaviour, with the customer playing the three distinct roles of user, payer and buyer.
Relationship marketing is an influential asset for customer behaviour analysis as it has a keen
interest in the re-discovery of the true meaning of marketing through the re-affirmation of the
importance of the customer or buyer. A greater importance is also placed on consumer
retention, customer relationship management, personalisation, customisation and one-to-one
marketing. Social functions can be categorized into social choice and welfare functions. Each
method for vote counting is assumed as a social function but if Arrow’s possibility theorem
is used for a social function, social welfare function is achieved. Some specifications of the
social functions are decisiveness, neutrality, anonymity, monotonocity, unanimity,
homogeneity and weak and strong Paretooptimality. No social choice function meets these
requirements in an ordinal scale simultaneously. The most important characteristic of a social
function is identification of the interactive effect of alternatives and creating a logical relation
with the ranks. Marketing provides services in order to satisfy customers. With that in mind,
the productive system is considered from its beginning at the production level, to the end of
the cycle, the consumer (Kioumarsi et al., 2009).

Belch and Belch define consumer behavior as 'the process and activities people engage in
when searching for, selecting, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing of products and
services so as to satisfy their needs and desires'.

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Black box model

ENVIRONMENTAL
BUYER'S BLACK BOX
FACTORS BUYER'S
Marketing Environmental RESPONSE
Buyer Characteristics Decision Process
Stimuli Stimuli

Product
Problem recognition choice
Attitudes
Product Economic Information search Brand choice
Motivation
Price Technical Alternative evaluation Dealer choice
Behaviour s
Place Political Purchase decision Purchase
Personality
Promotion Cultural Post-purchase timing
Lifestyle
behavior Purchase
amount
The black box model shows the interaction of stimuli, consumer characteristics, decision
process and consumer responses. It can be distinguished between interpersonal stimuli
(between people) or intrapersonal stimuli (within people).[2] The black box model is related to
the black box theory of behaviorism, where the focus is not set on the processes inside a
consumer, but the relation between the stimuli and the response of the consumer. The
marketing stimuli are planned and processed by the companies, whereas the environmental
stimulus are given by social factors, based on the economical, political and cultural
circumstances of a society. The buyers black box contains the buyer characteristics and the
decision process, which determines the buyers response.

The black box model considers the buyers response as a result of a conscious, rational
decision process, in which it is assumed that the buyer has recognized the problem. However,
in reality many decisions are not made in awareness of a determined problem by the
consumer.

Information search
Once the consumer has recognised a problem, they search for information on products and
services that can solve that problem. Belch and Belch (2007) explain that consumers
undertake both an internal (memory) and an external search.

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Sources of information include:

 Personal sources
 Commercial sources
 Public sources
 Personal experience

The relevant internal psychological process that is associated with information search is
behaviour . Behaviour is defined as 'the process by which an individual receives, selects,
organises, and interprets information to create a meaningful picture of the world'

The selective behaviour process

Stage Description

- Selective exposure consumers select which promotional messages they will expose
themselves to.
- Selective attention consumers select which promotional messages they will pay
attention to

- Selective comprehension consumer interpret messages in line with their beliefs,

attitudes, motives and experiences

- Selective retention consumers remember messages that are more meaningful or

important to them

The implications of this process help develop an effective promotional strategy, and select
which sources of information are more effective for the brand.

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 INFORMATION EVALUATION

At this time the consumer compares the brands and products that are in their evoked set. How
can the marketing organization increase the likelihood that their brand is part of the
consumer's evoked (consideration) set? Consumers evaluate alternatives in terms of the
functional and psychological benefits that they offer. The marketing organization needs to
understand what benefits consumers are seeking and therefore which attributes are most
important in terms of making a decision.

Purchase decision
Once the alternatives have been evaluated, the consumer is ready to make a purchase
decision. Sometimes purchase intention does not result in an actual purchase. The marketing
organization must facilitate the consumer to act on their purchase intention. The provision of
credit or payment terms may encourage purchase, or a sales promotion such as the
opportunity to receive a premium or enter a competition may provide an incentive to buy
now. The relevant internal psychological process that is associated with purchase decision is
integration.

Postpurchase evaluation
The EKB model was further developed by Rice (1993) which suggested there should be a
feedback loop, Foxall (2005) further suggests the importance of the post purchase evaluation
and that the post purchase evaluation is key due to its influences on future purchase patterns.

BUYING
Buying in has several meanings:

 In the securities market it refers to a process by which the buyer of securities, whose
seller fails to deliver the securities contracted for, can 'buy in' the securities from a
third party with the defaulting seller to make good.
 In poker it signifies the up-front payment required to participate in a given game or
tournament.
 In management and decision making, buy-in (as a verb or noun) signifies the
commitment of interested or affected parties to a decision (often called stakeholders)
to 'buy in' to the decision, that is, to agree to give it support, often by having been
involved in its formulation.

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Securities market use
On the English stock exchange, a transaction by which, if a member has sold securities which
he fails to deliver on settling day, or any of the succeeding ten days following the settlement,
the buyer may give instructions to a stock exchange official to "buy in" the stock required.
The official announces the quantity of stock, and the purpose for which he requires it, and
whoever sells the stock must be prepared to deliver it immediately. The original seller has to
pay the difference between the two prices, if the latter is higher than the original contract
price. A similar practice, termed "selling out," prevails when a purchaser fails to take up his
securities.

The practise is not limited to the UK Stock Exchange but is found in various forms on most
stock exchanges. The rules vary according to the local regulations, and the party which fails
to deliver is usually penalised and may even be suspended..

Alternatives to short selling available on the SGX :

1. Borrow the share and proceed to sell a stock.

2. Buy a put warrant
3. Short a CFD.
4. Sell a Single Stock Future (SSF) in the futures market.

Poker and gaming

"Buying in" regarding poker tournaments is the process of entering a poker tournament that
requires an up-front payment. The size of the payment, otherwise known as the "Buy In",
determines the total winning prize pool and also contains a fee, otherwise known as the rake,
that is paid to the house.

For example a 50 person capacity tournament could cost $55 to enter per player. In poker
terms this could equate to $50+5, meaning $50 goes to the prize pool to pay the eventual
winners and $5 (10%) goes to the house for hosting the tournament. In this example the prize
pool would contain $2500 and the house would take a total of $250 (also 10%).

Management
The process of lobbying for support for part of the influential group before suggesting an
idea, arguing a case or submitting a report.

19
In the sports world, buying in is a significant aspect of players/participants accepting goals
and direction from a coach, leader or program. "Buying in" becomes synonymous with
commitment and dedication. In the Spring of 2007, two film makers, Tim
Breitbach(Dopamine) and Ralph Barhydt, started producing a film entitled, "Buying In" that
explores the social issues of buying in based on the success of the boys' and girls' high school
basketball teams at The Branson School, in Ross, California, who each won the State
Championship in their division in 2007.

20
 LITERATURE REVIEW
Customer Satisfaction – Definitions
Satisfaction has been broadly defined by Vavra, T.G. (1997) as a satisfactory post-
purchase experience with a product or service given an existing purchase expectation.
Howard and Sheth (1969)
According to Westbrook and Reilly (1983) define satisfaction as, “The buyer’s cognitive
state of being adequately or inadequately rewarded for the sacrifices he has undergone”
(p.145). 6, customer satisfaction is “an emotional response to the experiences provided
by, associated with particular Customer Satisfaction Satisfaction has been broadly
defined by Vavra, T.G. (1997) as a satisfactory post-purchase experience with a product
or service given an existing purchase expectation. Howard and Sheth (1969)
According to Westbrook and Reilly (1983) define satisfaction as, “The buyer’s cognitive
state of being adequately or inadequately rewarded for the sacrifices he has undergone”
(p.145). 6,
customer satisfaction is “an emotional response to the experiences provided by,
associated with particular purchase expectations with perceptions of performance during
and after the consumption experience.13 Oliver (1981)14 defines customer satisfaction as
a customer’s emotional response to the use of a product or service. Anton (1996)15 offers
more elaboration: “customer satisfaction as a state of mind in which the customer’s
needs, wants and expectations throughout the product or service life have been met or
exceeded, resulting in subsequent repurchase and loyalty”. Merchant Account Glossary
points out that, “Customer satisfaction is an ambiguous and abstract concept and the
actual manifestation of the state of satisfaction will very from person to person and
produce/service to produce/service.....”16Schiffman and Kanuk (2004) 17 Woodruff and
Gardian (1996)
defines customer satisfaction as “The individual’s perception of the performance of the
product or service in relation to his or her expectations”.
According to Hung (1977), “…. satisfaction is a kind of stepping away from an
experience and evaluating it … One could have a pleasurable experience that caused
dissatisfaction because even though it was pleasurable, it wasn’t as pleasurable as it was
supposed to be. So satisfaction / dissatisfaction isn’t an emotion, it’s the evaluation of the
emotion”. define “Satisfaction, then, is the evaluation or feeling that results from the
21
 disconfirmation process. It is not the comparison itself (i.e., the disconfirmation process),
but it is the customer’s response to the comparison. Satisfaction has an emotional
component.”

Consumer behaviour

Cognitive theories of behaviour assume there is a poverty of stimulus. This (with reference
to behaviour ) is the claim that sensations are, by themselves, unable to provide a unique
description of the world. Sensations require 'enriching', which is the role of the mental model.
A different type of theory is the perceptual ecology approach of James J. Gibson. Gibson
rejected the assumption of a poverty of stimulus by rejecting the notion that behaviour is
based upon sensations – instead, he investigated what information is actually presented to the
perceptual systems. His theory "assumes the existence of stable, unbounded, and permanent
stimulus-information in the ambient optic array. And it supposes that the visual system can
explore and detect this information. The theory is information-based, not sensation-
based." He and the psychologists who work within this paradigm detailed how the world
could be specified to a mobile, exploring organism via the lawful projection of information
about the world into energy arrays. Specification is a 1:1 mapping of some aspect of the
world into a perceptual array; given such a mapping, no enrichment is required and
behaviour is direct behaviour .

Behaviour -in-action

An ecological understanding of behaviour derived from Gibson's early work is that of

"behaviour -in-action", the notion that behaviour is a requisite property of animate action;
that without behaviour , action would be unguided, and without action, behaviour would
serve no purpose. Animate actions require both behaviour and motion, and behaviour and
movement can be described as "two sides of the same coin, the coin is action". Gibson works
from the assumption that singular entities, which he calls "invariants", already exist in the
real world and that all that the behaviour process does is to home in upon them. A view
known as constructivism (held by such philosophers as Ernst von Glasersfeld) regards the
continual adjustment of behaviour and action to the external input as precisely what
constitutes the "entity", which is therefore far from being invariant.

Glasersfeld considers an "invariant" as a target to be homed in upon, and a pragmatic

necessity to allow an initial measure of understanding to be established prior to the updating

22
that a statement aims to achieve. The invariant does not and need not represent an actuality,
and Glasersfeld describes it as extremely unlikely that what is desired or feared by an
organism will never suffer change as time goes on. This social constructionist theory thus
allows for a needful evolutionary adjustment.

A mathematical theory of behaviour -in-action has been devised and investigated in many
forms of controlled movement, and has been described in many different species of organism
using the General Tau Theory. According to this theory, tau information, or time-to-goal
information is the fundamental 'percept' in behaviour .

Evolutionary psychology (EP) and behaviour

Many philosophers, such as Jerry Fodor, write that the purpose of behaviour is knowledge,
but evolutionary psychologists hold that its primary purpose is to guide action. For example,
they say, depth behaviour seems to have evolved not to help us know the distances to other
objects but rather to help us move around in space.[44] Evolutionary psychologists say that
animals from fiddler crabs to humans use eyesight for collision avoidance, suggesting that
vision is basically for directing action, not providing knowledge.

Building and maintaining sense organs is metabolically expensive, so these organs evolve
only when they improve an organism's fitness. More than half the brain is devoted to
processing sensory information, and the brain itself consumes roughly one-fourth of one's
metabolic resources, so the senses must provide exceptional benefits to fitness. Behaviour
accurately mirrors the world; animals get useful, accurate information through their senses.

Scientists who study behaviour and sensation have long understood the human senses as
adaptations. Depth behaviour consists of processing over half a dozen visual cues, each of
which is based on a regularity of the physical world. Vision evolved to respond to the narrow
range of electromagnetic energy that is plentiful and that does not pass through objects.
[44]
 Sound waves provide useful information about the sources of and distances to objects,
with larger animals making and hearing lower-frequency sounds and smaller animals making
and hearing higher-frequency sounds.[44]Taste and smell respond to chemicals in the
environment that were significant for fitness in the environment of evolutionary
adaptedness. The sense of touch is actually many senses, including pressure, heat, cold,
tickle, and pain. Pain, while unpleasant, is adaptive. An important adaptation for senses is
range shifting, by which the organism becomes temporarily more or less sensitive to
23
sensation. For example, one's eyes automatically adjust to dim or bright ambient light.
Sensory abilities of different organisms often coevolve, as is the case with the hearing of
echolocating bats and that of the moths that have evolved to respond to the sounds that the
bats make.

Evolutionary psychologists claim that behaviour demonstrates the principle of modularity,

with specialized mechanisms handling particular behaviour tasks. [44] For example, people
with damage to a particular part of the brain suffer from the specific defect of not being able
to recognize faces (prospagnosia). EP suggests that this indicates a so-called face-reading
module.

Theories of visual behaviour

 Empirical theories of behaviour

 Enactivism
 Anne Treisman's feature integration theory
 Interactive activation and competition
 Irving Biederman's recognition by components theory

Physiology
Sensory system

A sensory system is a part of the nervous system responsible for

processing sensory information. A sensory system consists of sensory receptors, neural
pathways, and parts of the brain involved in sensory behaviour . Commonly recognized
sensory systems are those for vision, hearing, somatic sensation (touch),
taste and olfaction (smell). It has been suggested that the immune system is an overlooked
sensory modality. In short, senses are transducers from the physical world to the realm of the
mind.

The receptive field is the specific part of the world to which a receptor organ and receptor
cells respond. For instance, the part of the world an eye can see, is its receptive field; the
light that each rod or cone can see, is its receptive field. Receptive fields have been identified
for the visual system, auditory system and somatosensory system, so far.

24
Consumer behaviour is a field of study that focuses on consumer activities. This has been a
topic of vast interest for the marketers all over the world. The marketing managers always
study these consumer behavioural changes and make continuous changes in products and
services. According to Blackwell et al. (2006), consumer behaviour is defined as the
activities that people undertake when obtaining, consuming and disposing of products and
services that they expect will satisfy their personal needs. Blackwell et al. (2006) mentions
that a customer follows a sequence before buying a product or service.
 consumer behaviour has become a factor that has a direct impact on the overall performance
of the businesses (Kotler and Keller, 2012)
consumer behaviour has become crucial especially due to fierce competition in retail industry
in the worldwide (Lancaster et al, 2002) consumer behaviour addressing the works of 
marketers. Moreover, consumer decision making process, in particular, five stages of
consumer decision making process will be discussed in detail.

25
 INDUSTRY PROFILE
TELECOM INDUSTRY
The Indian telecommunications industry, which, for long, was characterized
by regulated monopoly enjoyed by the Department of Telecom Industrys (DoT),
has entered the age of deregulated market competition in recent times. The
attractiveness of the Indian market due to its low tele-density, high latent demand
and burgeoning middle class, brought in some of the largest global telecom
players, foreign institutional investors and major Indian industrial houses to invest
in telecom, especially in the cellular services. Mobile phone usage has permeated
across various economic classes as well as professional categories. The rapid
change in consumer-behavior in this sector calls for curiosity and the intent to
study at least one important segment, viz., the youth.

Growth of the Mobile Industry in india

Till early 1990s, India had one of the most backward and stagnant telecom
infrastructure facilities ridden with ineffective government regulations, inadequate
financial resources and unaffordability for the common man. The Center for
Development of Telecom Industrys (C-DoT) had already changed the telecom
services in India for the betterment, in late 1980s by making inter-city customer-
dialling-also known as Subscriber Trunk Dialling or STD-available· to most parts of
the country. However, the sector saw trailblazing growth only since 2001, when
mobile phone usage attained the growth stage.

Mobile phone sector emerged in India in the mid-1990s and has been
growing. The growth has been more visible in the last 3-4 years. Airtel was the
forerunner among mobile service providers, followed by Vodafone , Spice and later
Reliance, Tata Indicom and a host of other small players like Idea, BPL, etc. In fact,
the increase in mobile phone subscribers between 1998 and 2003 was approximately
100%. In the beginning of 2005, there were 50.7 million mobile users in India 1
(including both GSM and CDMA users) and this number is expected to grow ~y 20
million in the year 2005-06. Intense competition in this sector has resulted in a
substantial decline in tariffs in case of mobile services and long distance calls in the

26
last two years. On one hand, due to fall in tariffs, profitability has gone down while
on the other, this has led to an increase in sales due to the growth in mobile
subscriber base.

Among the major changes that were responsible for the tremendous growth of
the industry was the drastic reduction in tariffs. The common experience curve effect,
resulting in reduction of average cost per subscriber on one-hand ·and the effect of
competition on the other, facilitated this subscriber-friendly phenomenon. Till the
entry of Reliance Infocom into the cellular market, tariffs were quite high and
unaffordable for the general middle class. However, when Reliance announced its
entry in the year 2000 with call rates of Rs. 0.40 per minute compared to about Rs.
3.00 of the other companies and other attractive schemes such as free national SMS,
free incoming calls and free outgoing calls to Reliance cell phones, the other major
Players were forced to cut down their high tariffs to survive in the industry. The
Calling Party Pays (CPP) regime introduced by mobile operators in response to
Reliance's strategy, and making incoming calls free, resulted in sharp increase in
wireless subscribers in 2003. In this period, the industry witnessed intense price war,
highlighting the fact that demand for cellular services in India is highly price-elastic.
Since then, however, the prices have become increasingly uniform across service
providers. As a result, the players had to adopt different strategies to attract more
subscribers, retain the existing ones and differentiate themselves from their
competitors. One of the dominant strategies adopted by most companies is to offer
special short-term schemes in the form of free SMS, free talk time, lower call-tariff
for a particular group of friends, free calls to one number and so on.

Developments in Mobile Technology in India,

At present there are two mobile technologies used in India: Global System for
Mobile Communication (GSM) technology, a type of Time Division Multiple Access
(TDMA) cellular network, and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 IX
technology. However, GSM technology has limitations in offering a range of
broadband services, which CDMA 2000 IX technology that powers WLL can
provide. The head start, which cellular companies had got in wireless, was dissipated
once WLL, limited mobility from the service providers like Reliance and Tata

27
Indicom became fully operational.

There has been an evolutionary change in mobile; communication systems in

every decade. The first-generation (1G) in the 1980s and second-generation (2G)
cellular systems in the' 1990s have been used mainly for voice transmission and to
support circuit-switched services. The 1G systems were based on analog
technologies; however, 2G systems are digital systems such as the GSM CDMA One
and PDC. These systems operate nationwide and internationally, and are today's
mainstream systems. Initiatives such as SMS, WAP, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth i-Mode, etc.,
based on 2G have exploited , the data capability of wireless networks to deliver
value-added services to customers. Now, third-generation (3G) systems have
emerged and the central theme of these technologies is the convergence of
communication and computing. Other than voice, 3G supports video telephony,
video games, multimedia, net-browsing, network games, e-mail and downloading, all
at a very high data-transfer rate. The migration from 3G to fourth-generation (4G)
technology will be a revolution both from technological and user perspectives. The
4G today is only an evolving concept and there is no real definition of what it will
be. The concept of convergence has already begun with 3G, and 4G will bring about
convergence of communication, computing, broadcasting etc.

Government Rules and Regulations

With the advent of GSM in the 1990s, two mobile licenses were issued per
circle. The licenses were, however, dogged by ineffective government regulations,
resulting in high consumer pricing. In 2001 the deregulation of mobile, fixed-line
and long distance sectors spurred growth and allowed many new players to enter the
market.

The regulatory norms introduced by TRAI had a significant impact on the

prices of long distance call charges, reducing them by as much as 80% in just one
year. It reduced the disparity between, tariffs of wire line and wireless services from
a factor of 15 to 3. However, the most important catalyst that transformed the Indian
telecom industry was the WLL controversy which began in November, 2000, when
TRAI proposed that Basic Service Operators (BSOs) should be allowed to use

28
cellular technology. Mobile calling on the WLL licenses was restricted to relevant
Short Distance Calling Areas (SDCAs). However, the BSOs exploited a loophole in
the license and offered 'fall mobility services' by using call forwarding and multiple
number registrations. As a result, the GSM-based operators who had paid a
significant license fee ($2.5 bn) contested this decision. This legal battle continued
for three years and was finally resolved when the government introduced Unified
Licensing, making cellular services technology neutral and allowing WLL players to
provide full mobility after payment of an entry fee equal to what the GSM operators
had paid. Unified Licensing reduced the regulatory uncertainty prevailing in the
Indian Telecom industry and provided a Ievel playing field for all the major mobile
service providers.

Emergence of Strategic Alliances

The telecom industry in India started out with many small and big players.
However, with falling tariffs and increasing demands, it became difficult for smaller
players to survive. This led to a consolidation in the industry and as of now, there
are only a few major players left in the field. A series of strategic alliances, both
formal and informal, have already been entered in the Indian Telecom Sector by
companies who are either constrained by a shortage of resources, do not have an
adequate presence in all geographical markets or driven by such needs as acquiring
know-how, minimizing risks, gaining critical mass or having access to brand names.
For example, Reliance Infocomm has entered into a technology agreement with
Samsung of South Korea to manufacture CDMA handsets. Tata Teleservices and
Hughes Tele.com have entered into an equity arrangement and have further plans to
join hands with Bharti. Under this arrangement , the three companies will operate in
contiguous and complementary circle with full internal coordination, thus creating a
third front in wire line business, capable of taking on the incumbent public sector
BSNL and MTNL (the first front) and Reliance Infocomm (the second front). In the
cellular segment, a three-company alliance called "Idea Cellular" has come up. It
has a large footprint (especially in the South) and consists of the cellular businesses
of the Tatas, Birlas and AT&T.

29
 TELECOM INDUSTRY IN INDIA

India's telecommunication network is the second largest in the world by number of

telephone users (both fixed and mobile phone) with 1.053 billion subscribers as on 31 August
2016. It has one of the lowest call tariffs in the world enabled by mega telecom operators and
hyper-competition among them. India has the world's second-largest Internet user-base. As
on 31 March 2016, there were 342.65 million internet subscribers in the country.

Major sectors of the Indian telecommunication industry are telephone, internet and television
broadcast Industry in the country which is in an ongoing process of transforming into next
generation network, employs an extensive system of modern network elements such as
digital telephone exchanges, mobile switching centres, media gateways and signalling
gateways at the core, interconnected by a wide variety of transmission systems using fibre-
optics or Microwave radio relay networks. The access network, which connects the
subscriber to the core, is highly diversified with different copper-pair, optic-fibre and
wireless technologies. DTH, a relatively new broadcasting technology has attained
significant popularity in the Television segment. The introduction of private FM has given a
fillip to the radio broadcasting in India. Telecom Industry in India has greatly been supported
by the INSAT system of the country, one of the largest domestic satellite systems in the
world. India possesses a diversified communications system, which links all parts of the
country by telephone, Internet, radio, television and satellite.

Indian telecom industry underwent a high pace of market liberalisation and growth since the
1990s and now has become the world's most competitive and one of the fastest growing
telecom markets. The Industry has grown over twenty times in just ten years, from under 37
million subscribers in the year 2001 to over 846 million subscribers in the year 2011. India
has the world's second-largest mobile phone user base with over 929.37 million users as of
May 2012. It has the world's second-largest Internet user-base with over 300 million as of
June 2015.

Telecom Industry has supported the socioeconomic development of India and has played a
significant role to narrow down the rural-urban digital divide to some extent. It also has
helped to increase the transparency of governance with the introduction of e-governancein
India. The government has pragmatically used modern telecommunication facilities to
deliver mass education programmes for the rural folk of India.

30
History

The beginning

A microwave tower for short distance (~50 km) communication

Telecom Industrys in India began with the introduction of the telegraph. The Indian postal
and telecom sectors are one of the worlds oldest. In 1850, the first experimental electric
telegraph line was started between Calcutta and Diamond Harbour. In 1851, it was opened
for the use of the British East India Company. The Posts and Telegraphs department
occupied a small corner of the Public Works Department, at that time.

The construction of 4,000 miles (6,400 km) of telegraph lines was started in November 1853.
These connected Kolkata (then Calcutta) andPeshawar in the north; Agra, Mumbai (then
Bombay) through Sindwa Ghats, and Chennai (then Madras) in the
south; Ootacamund andBangalore. William O'Shaughnessy, who pioneered the telegraph and
telephone in India, belonged to the Public Works Department, and worked towards the
development of telecom throughout this period. A separate department was opened in 1854
when telegraph facilities were opened to the public.

In 1880, two telephone companies namely The Oriental Telephone Company Ltd. and The

Anglo-Indian Telephone Company Ltd. approached the Government of India to
establish telephone exchange in India. The permission was refused on the grounds that the

31
establishment of telephones was a Government monopoly and that the Government itself
would undertake the work. In 1881, the Government later reversed its earlier decision and a
licence was granted to the Oriental Telephone Company Limited of England for opening
telephone exchanges at Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and Ahmedabad and the first formal
telephone service was established in the country. On 28 January 1882, Major E. Baring,
Member of the Governor General of India's Council declared open the Telephone Exchanges
in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. The exchange in Calcutta named the "Central Exchange"
had a total of 93 subscribers in its early stage. Later that year, Bombay also witnessed the
opening of a telephone exchange.

Further developments and milestones

 Pre-1902 – Cable telegraph

 1902 – First wireless telegraph station established between Sagar
Island and Sandhead.
 1907 – First Central Battery of telephones introduced in Kanpur.
 1913–1914 – First Automatic Exchange installed in Shimla.
 1927 – Radio-telegraph system between the UK and India, with Imperial Wireless
Chain beam stations at Khadki and Daund. Inaugurated by Lord Irwin on 23 July by
exchanging greetings with King George V.
 1933 – Radiotelephone system inaugurated between the UK and India.
 1953 – 12 channel carrier system introduced.
 1960 – First subscriber trunk dialling route commissioned
between Lucknow and Kanpur.
 1975 – First PCM system commissioned between Mumbai City
and Andheri telephone exchanges.
 1976 – First digital microwave junction.
 1979 – First optical fibre system for local junction commissioned at Pune.
 1980 – First satellite earth station for domestic communications established
at Sikandarabad, U.P..
 1983 – First analogue Stored Programme Control exchange for trunk
lines commissioned at Mumbai.

32
 1984 – C-DOT established for indigenous development and production
of digital exchanges.
 1995 – First mobile telephone service started on non-commercial basis on 15 August
1995 in Delhi.
 1995 – Internet Introduced in India starting with Laxmi Nagar, Delhi 15 August 1995

Development of Broadcasting: Radio broadcasting was initiated in 1927 but became state

responsibility only in 1930. In 1937 it was given the name All India Radio and since 1957 it
has been called Akashvani. Limited duration of television programming began in 1959, and
complete broadcasting followed in 1965. The Ministry of Information and
Broadcasting owned and maintained the audio-visual apparatus—including the television
channel Doordarshan—in the country prior to the economic reforms of 1991. In 1997, an
autonomous body was established in the name of Prasar Bharti to take care of the public
service broadcasting under the Prasar Bharti Act. All India Radio and Doordarshan, which
earlier were working as media units under the Ministry of I&B became constituents of the
body.

Pre-liberalisation statistics: While all the major cities and towns in the country were linked
with telephones during the British period, the total number of telephones in 1948 numbered
only around 80,000. Post independence, growth remained slow because the telephone was
seen more as a status symbol rather than being an instrument of utility. The number of
telephones grew leisurely to 980,000 in 1971, 2.15 million in 1981 and 5.07 million in 1991,
the year economic reforms were initiated in the country.

Liberalisation and privatisation

Liberalisation of Indian telecommunication in industry started in 1981 when Prime

Minister Indira Gandhi signed contracts with Alcatel CIT of France to merge with the state
owned Telecom Company (ITI), in an effort to set up 5,000,000 lines per year. But soon the
policy was let down because of political opposition. Attempts to liberalise the
telecommunication industry were continued by the following government under the prime-
minister-ship of Rajiv Gandhi. He invited Sam Pitroda, a US-based Non-resident Indian
NRI and a former Rockwell International executive to set up a Centre for Development of
Telematics(C-DOT) which manufactured electronic telephone exchanges in India for the first

33
time. Sam Pitroda had a significant role as a consultant and adviser in the development of
telecommunication in India.

In 1985, the Department of Telecom(DoT) was separated from Indian Post & Telecom

Industry Department. DoT was responsible for telecom services in entire country until 1986
when Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) and Videsh Sanchar Nigam
Limited (VSNL) were carved out of DoT to run the telecom services of metro
cities(Delhi andMumbai) and international long distance operations respectively.

The demand for telephones was ever increasing and in the 1990s Indian government was
under increasing pressure to open up the telecom sector for private investment as a part
of Liberalisation-Privatisation-Globalisation policies that the government had to accept to
overcome the severe fiscal crisis and resultant balance of payments issue in 1991.
Consequently, private investment in the sector of Value Added Services (VAS) was allowed
and cellular telecom sector were opened up for competition from private investments. It was
during this period that the Narsimha Rao-led government introduced the National Telecom
Industrys policy (NTP) in 1994 which brought changes in the following areas: ownership,
service and regulation of telecommunications infrastructure. The policy introduced the
concept of telecommunication for all and its vision was to expand the telecommunication
facilities to all the villages in India.[23] Liberalisation in the basic telecom sector was also
envisaged in this policy. They were also successful in establishing joint ventures between
state owned telecom companies and international players. Foreign firms were eligible to 49%
of the total stake. The multi-nationals were just involved in technology transfer, and not
policy making.

During this period, the World Bank and ITU had advised the Indian Government to liberalise
long distance services to release the monopoly of the state owned DoT and VSNL and to
enable competition in the long distance carrier business which would help reduce tariff's and
better the economy of the country. The Rao run government instead liberalised the local
services, taking the opposite political parties into confidence and assuring foreign
involvement in the long distance business after 5 years. The country was divided into 20
telecommunication circles for basic telephony and 18 circles for mobile services. These
circles were divided into category A, B and C depending on the value of the revenue in each
circle. The government threw open the bids to one private company per circle along with

34
government owned DoT per circle. For cellular service two service providers were allowed
per circle and a 15 years licence was given to each provider. During all these improvements,
the government did face oppositions from ITI, DoT, MTNL, VSNL and other labour unions,
but they managed to keep away from all the hurdles.

In 1997, the government set up TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) which
reduced the interference of Government in deciding tariffs and policy making. The political
powers changed in 1999 and the new government under the leadership of Atal Bihari
Vajpayee was more pro-reforms and introduced better liberalisation policies. In 2000,
theVajpayee government constituted the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate
Tribunal (TDSAT) through an amendment of the TRAI Act, 1997. The primary objective of
TDSAT's establishment was to release TRAI from adjudicatory and dispute settlement
functions in order to strengthen the regulatory framework. Any dispute involving parties like
licensor, licensee, service provider and consumers are resolved by TDSAT. Moreover, any
direction, order or decision of TRAI can be challenged by appealing in TDSAT. The
government corporatised the operations wing of DoT on 1 October 2000 and named it
as Department of Telecom Industry Services (DTS) which was later named as Bharat
Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). The proposal of raising the stake of foreign investors from
49% to 74% was rejected by the opposite political parties and leftist thinkers. Domestic
business groups wanted the government to privatise VSNL. Finally in April 2002, the
government decided to cut its stake of 53% to 26% in VSNL and to throw it open for sale to
private enterprises. TATA finally took 25% stake in VSNL.

This was a gateway to many foreign investors to get entry into the Indian Telecom Markets.
After March 2000, the government became more liberal in making policies and issuing
licences to private operators. The government further reduced licence fees for cellular
service providers and increased the allowable stake to 74% for foreign companies. Because
of all these factors, the service fees finally reduced and the call costs were cut greatly
enabling every common middle-class family in India to afford a cell phone. Nearly 32
million handsets were sold in India. The data reveals the real potential for growth of the
Indian mobile market.[28] Many private operators, such as Reliance
Communications, Jio, Tata Indicom, Vodafone, Loop Mobile, Airtel, Idea etc., successfully
entered the high potential Indian telecom market.

35
In March 2008 the total GSM and CDMA mobile subscriber base in the country was 375
million, which represented a nearly 50% growth when compared with previous year. [29] As
the unbranded Chinese cell phones which do not have International Mobile Equipment
Identity (IMEI) numbers pose a serious security risk to the country, Mobile network
operatorstherefore suspended the usage of around 30 million mobile phones (about 8% of all
mobiles in the country) by 30 April. Phones without valid IMEI cannot be connected to
cellular operators. 5–6 years the average monthly subscribers additions were around 0.05 to
0.1 million only and the total mobile subscribers base in December 2002 stood at 10.5
millions. However, after a number of proactive initiatives taken by regulators and licensors,
the total number of mobile subscribers has increased rapidly to over 929 million subscribers
as of May 2012.

India has opted for the use of both the GSM (global system for mobile
communications) and CDMA (code-division multiple access) technologies in
the mobile sector. In addition tolandline and mobile phones, some of the companies also
provide the WLL service. The mobile tariffs in India have also become the lowest in the
world. A new mobile connection can be activated with a monthly commitment of US$0.15
only. In 2005 alone additions increased to around 2 million per month in 2003–04 and 2004–
05.

Telephony
Market share of mobile network operators as on 1 march 2017

   Airtel: 256.8 million (22.6%)

   Vodafone: 199.7 million (17.6%)

   Idea: 176.49 million (15.5%)
   Jio: 105 million (9.2%)
   RCom: 95.46 million (8.4%)
   BSNL: 90.71 million (8.0%)
   Aircel: 89.33 million (7.9%)
   Tata Docomo: 58.67 million (5.2%)
   Telenor: 53.11 million (4.7%)

36
   MTS: 7.35 million (0.6%)
   MTNL: 3.59 million (0.3%)

Wired telephony market share as on 31 July 2016[31]

   BSNL: 14.04 million (57.1%)

   MTNL: 3.47 million (14.1%)

   Airtel: 3.75 million (15.3%)
   RCom: 1.17 million (4.8%)
   Tata Docomo: 1.73 million (7.0%)
   Others: 0.42 million (1.7%)

The telephony segment is dominated by private-sector and two state-run businesses. Most
companies were formed by a recent revolution and restructuring launched within a decade,
directed by Ministry of Communications and IT, Department of Telecom
Industrys and Minister of Finance. Since then, most companies
gained 2G, 3G and 4G licences and engaged fixed-line, mobile and internet business in India.
On landlines, intra-circle calls are considered local calls while inter-circle are considered
long distance calls. Foreign Direct Investment policy which increased the foreign ownership
cap from 49% to 74%.Now it is 100%. The Government is working to integrate the whole
country in one telecom circle. For long distance calls, the area code prefixed with a zero is
dialled first which is then followed by the number (i.e., to call Delhi, 011 would be dialled
first followed by the phone number). For international calls, "00" must be dialled first
followed by the country code, area code and local phone number. The country code for India
is 91. Several international fibre-optic links include those to Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong,
Russia, and Germany. Some major telecom operators in India include Airtel, Vodafone, Idea,
Aircel, BSNL, MTNL, Reliance Communications, TATA Teleservices, Infotel, MTS,
Uninor, TATA DoCoMo, Videocon, Augere, Tikona Digital.

Landline

Hitherto the New Telecom Policy was announced in 1999, only the Government-
owned BSNL and MTNL were allowed to provide land-line phone services through copper

37
wire in India with MTNL operating in Delhi and Mumbai and BSNL servicing all other areas
of the country. Due to the rapid growth of the cellular phone industry in India, landlines are
facing stiff competition from cellular operators. This has forced land-line service providers to
become more efficient and improve their quality of service. Land-line connections are now
also available on demand, even in high density urban areas. India has over 31 million main
line customers.

Mobile telephony
Mobile network operators of India

Typical signboards of STD booths (kiosks from where STD calls can be made) and internet
kiosks in India

In August 1995, then Chief Minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu made the first mobile phone
call in India to then Union Telecom Minister Sukhram. Sixteen years later 4th generation
services were launched in Kolkata.

With a subscriber base of more than 929 million, the Mobile telecommunications system in
India is the second largest in the world and it was thrown open to private players in the
1990s. GSM was comfortably maintaining its position as the dominant mobile technology
with 80% of the mobile subscriber market, but CDMA seemed to have stabilised its market
share at 20% for the time being. By May 2012 the country had 929 million mobile
subscribers, up from 350 million just 40 months earlier. The mobile market was continuing to
expand at an annual rate in excess of 40% coming into 2010.

38
The country is divided into multiple zones, called circles (roughly along state boundaries).
Government and several private players run local and long distance telephone services.
Competition has caused prices to drop and calls across India are one of the cheapest in the
world. The rates are supposed to go down further with new measures to be taken by the
Information Ministry. Call drop fine: Telcos warn of raising tariff. In September 2004, the
number of mobile phone connections crossed the number of fixed-line connections and
presently dwarfs the wireline segment by a ratio of around 20:1. The mobile subscriber base
has grown by a factor of over a hundred and thirty, from 5 million subscribers in 2001 to
over 929 million subscribers as of May 2012. India primarily follows the GSM mobile
system, in the 900 MHz band. Recent operators also operate in the 1800 MHz band. The
dominant players are Airtel, Reliance Infocomm, Vodafone, Idea cellular and BSNL/MTNL.
There are many smaller players, with operations in only a few states.
International roaming agreements exist between most operators and many foreign carriers.
The government allowed Mobile number portability (MNP) which enables mobile telephone
users to retain their mobile telephone numbers when changing from one mobile network
operator to another.

Frequency bands

As of 2016, India has deployed telecom operations in a total of 8 radio frequency bands.

39
 Internet
Internet in India

The history of the Internet in India started with launch of services by VSNL on 15 August
1995. They were able to add about 10,000 Internet users within 6 months. [43] However, for
the next 10 years the Internet experience in the country remained less attractive with narrow-
band connections having speeds less than 56 kbit/s (dial-up). In 2004, the government
formulated its broadband policy which defined broadband as "an always-on Internet
connection with download speed of 256 kbit/s or above."[44] From 2005 onward the growth of
the broadband sector in the country accelerated, but remained below the growth estimates of
the government and related agencies due to resource issues in last-mile access which were
predominantly wired-line technologies. This bottleneck was removed in 2010 when the
government auctioned 3G spectrum followed by an equally high-profile auction
of 4G spectrum that set the scene for a competitive and invigorated wireless broadband
market. Now Internet access in India is provided by both public and private companies using
a variety of technologies and media including dial-up (PSTN), xDSL, coaxial cable, Ethernet,
FTTH, ISDN, HSDPA (3G), WiFi, WiMAX, etc. at a wide range of speeds and costs. As per
IAMAI India will have the world's second largest number of Internet users with over 300
million by December 2014.[45]

According to the Internet And Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the Internet user base
in the country stood at 190 million at the end of June, 2013. [46] As of October, 2013 report, it
is over 205 million.[45] The number of broadband subscribers at the end of May 2013 was
15.19 million. Cumulative Annual Growth rate (CAGR) of broadband during the five-year
period between 2005 and 2010 was about 117 per cent.[44] DSL, while holding slightly more
than 75% of the local broadband market, was steadily losing market share to other non-DSL
broadband platforms, especially to wireless broadband.

There were 161 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offering broadband services in India as of

31 May 2013. The top five ISPs in terms subscriber base were BSNL (9.96 million), Bharti
Airtel (1.40 million), MTNL (1.09 million), Hathway (0.36 million) and You Broadband
(0.31 million).[47] Cyber cafes remain the major source of Internet access. In 2009, about 37
per cent of the users access the Internet from cyber cafes, 30 per cent from an office, and 23

40
per cent from home. However, the number of mobile Internet users increased rapidly from
2009 on and there were about 274 million mobile users at the end of September 2010, with a
majority using 2G mobile networks. Mobile Internet subscriptions as reported by
the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in March 2011 increased to 381 million.

One of the major issues facing the Internet segment in India is the lower average bandwidth
of broadband connections compared to that of developed countries. According to 2007
statistics, the average download speed in India hovered at about 40 KB per second
(256 kbit/s), the minimum speed set by TRAI, whereas the international average was 5.6
Mbit/s during the same period. In order to attend this infrastructure issue the government
declared 2007 as "the year of broadband". To compete with international standards of
defining broadband speed the Indian Government has taken the aggressive step of proposing
a $13 billion national broadband network to connect all cities, towns and villages with a
population of more than 500 in two phases targeted for completion by 2012 and 2013. The
network was supposed to provide speeds up to 10 Mbit/s in 63 metropolitan areas and 4
Mbit/s in an additional 352 cities. Also, the Internet penetration rate in India is one of the
lowest in the world and only accounts for 8.4% of the population compared to the rate
in OECD counties, where the average is over 50%. Another issue is the digital divide where
growth is biased in favour of urban areas; according to 2010 statistics, more than 75 per cent
of the broadband connections in the country are in the top 30 cities. Regulators have tried to
boost the growth of broadband in rural areas by promoting higher investment in rural
infrastructure and establishing subsidised tariffs for rural subscribers under the Universal
service obligation scheme of the Indian government.

As of May 2014, the Internet was delivered to India mainly by 9 different undersea fibres,
including SEA-ME-WE 3, Bay of Bengal Gateway and Europe India Gateway, arriving at 5
different landing points.

Net neutrality
Net neutrality in India

As of 2015, India had no laws governing net neutrality and there have been violations of net
neutrality principles by some service providers. While the Telecom Regulatory Authority of
India (TRAI) guidelines for the Unified Access Service license promote net neutrality, they

41
are not enforced. The Information Technology Act, 2000 does not prohibit companies from
throttling their service in accordance with their business interests.[53]

In March 2015, the TRAI released a formal consultation paper on Regulatory Framework for
Over-the-top (OTT) services, seeking comments from the public. The consultation paper was
criticised for being one sided and having confusing statements. It was condemned by various
politicians and internet users. By 18 April 2015, over 800,000 emails had been sent to TRAI
demanding net neutrality.

Regulatory environment

LIRNEasia's Telecom Industrys Regulatory Environment (TRE) index, which summarises

stakeholders' perception on certain TRE dimensions, provides insight into how conducive the
environment is for further development and progress. The most recent survey was conducted
in July 2008 in eight Asian countries, including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka,
Maldives, Pakistan, Thailand, and the Philippines. The tool measured seven dimensions: i)
market entry; ii) access to scarce resources; iii) interconnection; iv) tariff regulation; v) anti-
competitive practices; and vi) universal services; vii) quality of service, for the fixed, mobile
and broadband sectors.

The results for India, point out to the fact that the stakeholders perceive the TRE to be most
conducive for the mobile sector followed by fixed and then broadband. Other than for Access
to Scarce Resources the fixed sector lags behind the mobile sector. The fixed and mobile
sectors have the highest scores for Tariff Regulation. Market entry also scores well for the
mobile sector as competition is well entrenched with most of the circles with 4–5 mobile
service providers. The broadband sector has the lowest score in the aggregate. The low
penetration of broadband of mere 3.87 against the policy objective of 9 million at then end of
2007 clearly indicates that the regulatory environment is not very conducive.

In 2013 the home ministry stated that legislation must ensure that law enforcement agencies
are empowered to intercept communications.

Revenue and growth

The total revenue in the telecom service sector was ₹867.2 billion (US$12.9 billion) in

2005–06 as against ₹716.74 billion (US$10.7 billion) in 2004–2005, registering a growth of

42
21% with estimated revenue of FY'2011 of ₹8.35 billion (US$120 million). The total
investment in the telecom services sector reached ₹2,006 billion (US$29.8 billion) in 2005–
06, up from ₹1,788 billion (US$26.6 billion) in the previous fiscal. Telecom Industry is the
lifeline of the rapidly growing Information Technology industry. Internet subscriber base has
risen to more than a 121 million in 2011. [67] Out of this 11.47 million were broadband
connections. More than a billion people use the Internet globally. Under the Bharat Nirman,
the Government of India will ensure that 66,822 revenue villages in the country, which have
not yet been provided with a Village Public Telephone (VPT), will be connected. However
doubts have been raised about what it would mean for the poor in the country.

It is difficult to ascertain fully the employment potential of the telecom sector but the
enormity of the opportunities can be gauged from the fact that there were 3.7 million Public
Call Offices in December 2005up from 2.3 million in December 2004.

The Total Revenue of Indian Telecom Services company is likely to exceed ₹2,000

billion (US$30 billion) ( US$44 Bn approx) for FY 11–12 based on FY 10–11 nos and latest
quarterly results. These are consolidated numbers including foreign operation of Bharti
Airtel. The major contributions to this revenue are as follows:

 Airtel ₹65,060 (US$970)
 Reliance Communications ₹31,468 (US$470)
 Idea ₹16,936 (US$250)
 Tata Communications ₹11,931 (US$180)
 MTNL ₹4,380 (US$65)
 TTML ₹2,248 (US$33)
 BSNL ₹32,045 (US$480)
 Vodafone India ₹18,376 (US$270)
 Tata Teleservices ₹9,200 (US$140)
 Aircel ₹7,968 (US$120)
 SSTL ₹600 (US$8.90)
 Uninor ₹660 (US$9.80)
 Loop ₹560 (US$8.30)
 Stel ₹60 (89¢ US)
 HFCL ₹204 (US$3.00)

43
 Videocon Telecom ₹254 (US$3.80)
 DB Etisalat/ Allianz ₹47 (70¢ US)
 Grand Total ₹2,019 billion (US$30 billion)

44
 COMPANY PROFILE
Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel Limited

Type Public

Traded as BSE: 532454NSE: BHARTIARTL
BSE SENSEX Constituent

ISIN INE397D01024

Industry Telecommunications

Founded 7 July 1995

Founder Sunil Bharti Mittal

Headquarters Bharti Crescent, 1, Nelson Mandela Road,

New Delhi,India

Area served India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Africa

Key people Sunil Bharti Mittal (Chairman and MD)

Products Fixed line and mobile

telephony, broadband and fixed-line
internet services,digital

45
 television and IPTV

Revenue ₹966.021 billion(US$14 billion) (2016)

Operating ₹341 billion (US$5.1 billion) (2016)

income

Profit ₹54 billion (US$800 million) (2016)

Total assets ₹2,248 billion (US$33 billion) (2016)

Total equity ₹708 billion (US$11 billion) (2016)

Number of 25,400(2016)[2]
employees

Parent Bharti Enterprises (68%)

SingTel (36.27%) 

Subsidiaries Airtel India

Airtel Sri Lanka
airtel Africa
Wynk
Robi (25%)

Website www.airtel.com

Bharti Airtel Limited is an Indian global telecommunications services company based

in New Delhi, India. It operates in 18 countries across South Asia and Africa. Airtel
provides GSM, 3G and 4G LTE mobile services, fixed line broadband and voice services
depending upon the country of operation. It is the largest mobile network operator in India
and the third largest in the world with 400 million subscribers. Airtel was named India's
second most valuable brand in the first ever Brandz ranking by Millward Brownand WPP
plc.

Airtel is credited with pioneering the business strategy of outsourcing all of its business
operations except marketing, sales and finance and building the 'minutes factory' model of
low cost and high volumes. The strategy has since been adopted by several operators. Airtel's

46
equipment is provided and maintained by Ericsson and Nokia Solutions and
Networks whereas IT support is provided by IBM The transmission towers are maintained by
subsidiaries and joint venture companies of Bharti including Bharti Infratel and Indus
Towers in India.[11] Ericsson agreed for the first time to be paid by the minute for installation
and maintenance of their equipment rather than being paid up front, which allowed Airtel to
provide low call rates of ₹1 (1.5¢ US)/minute.

History

In 1984 Sunil Mittal started assembling push-button phones in India,[13] which he earlier used

to import from a Taiwan company, Kingtel, replacing the old fashioned, bulky rotary
phones that were in use in the country then. Bharti Telecom Limited (BTL) was incorporated
and entered into a technical tie up with Siemens AG of Germany for manufacture of
electronic push button phones. By the early 1990s, Bharti was making fax machines, cordless
phones and other telecom gear. He named his first push-button phones as 'Mitbrau'.

In 1992, he successfully bid for one of the four mobile phone network licences auctioned
in India. One of the conditions for the Delhi cellular license was that the bidder have some
experience as a telecom operator. So, Mittal clinched a deal with the French telecom
group Vivendi. He was one of the first Indian entrepreneurs to identify the mobile telecom
business as a major growth area. His plans were finally approved by the Government in
1994 and he launched services in Delhi in 1995, when Bharti Cellular Limited (BCL) was
formed to offer cellular services under the brand name AirTel. Within a few years Bharti
became the first telecom company to cross the 2-million mobile subscriber mark. Bharti also
brought down the STD/ISD cellular rates in India under brand name 'Indiaone'.

In 1999, Bharti Enterprises acquired control of JT Holdings, and extended cellular operations
to Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. In 2000, Bharti acquired control of Skycell
Communications, in Chennai. In 2001, the company acquired control of Spice Cell
in Calcutta. Bharti Enterprises went public in 2002, and the company was listed on Bombay
Stock Exchange and National Stock Exchange of India. In 2003, the cellular phone
operations were re-branded under the single Airtel brand. In 2004, Bharti acquired control of
Hexacom and entered Rajasthan. In 2005, Bharti extended its network to Andaman and
Nicobar. This expansion allowed it to offer voice services all across India.

47
Airtel launched "Hello Tunes", a Caller ring back tone service (CRBT), in July 2004
becoming to the first operator in India to do so. The Airtel theme song, composed by A.R.
Rahman, was the most popular tune on that year.

In May 2008, it emerged that Airtel was exploring the possibility of buying the MTN Group,
a South Africa-based telecommunications company with coverage in 21 countries in Africa
and the Middle East. The Financial Times reported that Bharti was considering
offering US$45 billion for a 100% stake in MTN, which would be the largest overseas
acquisition ever by an Indian firm. However, both sides emphasise the tentative nature of the
talks, while The Economist magazine noted, "If anything, Bharti would be marrying up," as
MTN has more subscribers, higher revenues and broader geographic coverage.[16] However,
the talks fell apart as MTN Group tried to reverse the negotiations by making Bharti almost a
subsidiary of the new company.[17] In May 2009, Bharti Airtel again confirmed that it was in
talks with MTN and the companies agreed to discuss the potential transaction exclusively by
31 July 2009. Talks eventually ended without agreement, some sources stating that this was
due to opposition from the South African government.

In 2009, Bharti negotiated for its strategic partner Alcatel-Lucent to manage the network
infrastructure for the fixed line business. Later, Bharti Airtel awarded the three-year contract
to Alcatel-Lucent for setting up an Internet Protocol access network across the country. This
would help consumers access internet at faster speed and high quality internet browsing on
mobile handsets.

In 2009, Airtel launched its first international mobile network in Sri Lanka. In June 2010,
Bhartil acquired the African business of Zain Telecom for $10.7 billion making it the largest
ever acquisition by an Indian telecom firm. In 2012, Bharti tied up with Wal-Mart, the US
retail giant, to start a number of retail stores across India. In 2014, Bharti planned to
acquire Loop Mobile for ₹7 billion (US$100 million), but the deal was called off later.

Bharti Airtel Limited ("Airtel"), the world's third largest mobile operator with operations in
20 countries across Asia and Africa, today said that its Treasury division has been adjudged
as a highly commended winner of the Top Treasury Team (Asia) Awards at the Adam Smith
Asia Awards 2015.

Airtel India

48
Airtel India is the largest provider of mobile telephony and second largest provider of fixed
telephony in India, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription televisionservices. It
offers its telecom services under the "airtel" brand, and is headed by Sunil Bharti Mittal.

Corporate structure

Airtel has two distinct Customer Business Units (CBU) with focus on B2C (Business to
Customer) and B2B (Business to Business) segments. Airtel's B2C business unit deals with
servicing the retail consumers, homes and small offices providing mobile, fixed line, DTH
and m-commerce services while the B2B unit deals with large corporate accounts.

Telemedia

Under the Telemedia segment, Airtel provides broadband internet access through DSL,
internet leased lines as well as MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) solutions, as well
asIPTV and fixed line telephone services. Until 18 September 2004, Bharti provided fixed
line telephony and broadband services under the Touchtel brand. Bharti now provides all
telecom services including fixed line services under a common brand airtel. As of September
2012, Airtel provides Telemedia services to 3.3 million customers in 87 cities. As on 30
November 2012, Airtel had 1.39 million broadband subscribers.

Airtel Broadband provides broadband and IPTV services. Airtel provides both capped as well
as unlimited download plans. However, Airtel's unlimited plans are subject to free usage
policy (FUP), which reduces speed after the customer crosses a certain data usage limit. In
most of the plans, Airtel provides only 512kbit/s beyond FUP, which is lower than the TRAI
specified limit of half the subscriber's original speed. [27][28] The maximum speed available for
home users under the new V-Fiber program is 100MBit/s and with DSL is 16Mbit/s

In May 2012, Airtel Broadband and some other Indian ISPs temporarily blocked file sharing
websites such as vimeo.com megavideo.com, thepiratebay.se, etc. with out giving any legal
information to the customers.

Digital television
Airtel digital TV

The Digital television business provides Direct-to-Home (DTH) TV services across India

under the brand name Airtel digital TV. It started services on 9 October 2008 and had about
7.9 million customers at the end of December 2012.

49
Enterprise

The Enterprise business provides end-to-end telecom solutions to corporate customers and

national and international long-distance services to telcos through its nationwide fibre optic
backbone, last mile connectivity in fixed-line and mobile circles, VSATs, ISP and
international bandwidth access through the gateways and landing stations. It has two sections
under it.

Mobile data service

The different services under mobile data are BlackBerry services, a web-enabled mobile
email solution working on 'Push Technology', USB modem that helps in getting instant
access to Internet and corporate applications, Airtel Data Card that gives the liberty to access
the internet anytime, Easy Mail is a platform that provides access to personal/corporate e-
mails independent of handset operating system and application services that shorten the
queues at the billing section, off-load the pressure on the billing staff and bring convenience
to the user.

Enterprise business solutions

There are two kinds of solutions offered by Airtel. One is GPRS Based Solutions like mobile
applications tools for enterprise, TrackMate, automatic meter reading solutions etc. and the
other is SMS Based Solutions like interactive sms, bulk sms, inbound call centre solutions.

The ‘India with Airtel’ package is said to be a one-stop-shop for availing all telecom and
connectivity solutions including mobile and fixed telephony, global and domestic data
capacity and connectivity solutions, VSAT, Virtual Private Network, data centre and cloud
solutions, Value Added Services and payment and billing integration, machine-to-machine,
and managed services.[31]

Android-based tablet

Beetel Teletech Ltd., a unit of Bharti Enterprises Ltd., on 18 August 2011, launched
a ₹9,999 (US$150) 7-inch tablet in India based on Google Inc.'s Android operating system.
The offering is intended to capitalise on the expected demand for cheap computing devices in
the world's fastest-growing and second-largest mobile phone market.[32]

International presence

50
Coverage map of Bharti Airtel across 19 countries

Airtel is the one of the largest mobile operator in the world in terms of subscriber base and
has a commercial presence in 19 countries and the Channel Islands, Baysquare Technology
developed a Settlement and Reconciliation Tool (SRT) to reconcile from various data
streams. The system was developed to match the calls being captured by the network
elements and the calls getting rated, i.e. ensuring that operator is billing all calls its serves
and also it is paying out to other operators the correct billing amounts.

Its area of operations include:

 The Indian Subcontinent:
 Airtel India, in India
 Airtel Sri Lanka, in Sri Lanka
 Airtel Africa, which operates in 17 African countries:
 Burkina Faso, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the
Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seych
elles, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
 The British Crown Dependency islands of Jersey and Guernsey, under the brand
name Airtel-Vodafone, through an agreement with Vodafone.

Airtel operates in the following countries:

†Jersey and Guernsey are British Crown Dependencies. They are not independent countries.
Therefore, Airtel's countries of operation is considered to be 19.

Africa[edit]
Main article: airtel Africa

51
Airtel office in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Airtel Africa is a subsidiary of Indian telecommunications company Airtel, that operates in

17 countries across Africa. It operates a GSMnetwork in all countries,
providing 2G or 3G depending upon the country of operation.

On 8 June 2010, Bharti Airtel completed the purchase of mobile operations in 15 African
countries from Zain, a Kuwaiti operator.[40]

On 11 August 2010, Bharti Airtel announced that it would acquire Telecom Seychelles for
US$62 million.[41]

Sale to Orange[edit]

On 13 January 2016,Orange and Bharti Airtel International Wednesday inked a deal that will
allow Orange's acquisition of Airtel's operations in Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone. This will
bring down the number of countries where Airtel operates to 18. On 19 July 2016, Airtel
completed the sale of both these operations to France-based Orange SA.[citation needed]

Bangladesh[edit]

airtel Bangladesh Ltd. was a GSM-based cellular operator in Bangladesh. Airtel was the sixth
mobile phone carrier to enter the Bangladesh market, and originally launched commercial
operations under the brand name "Warid Telecom" on 10 May 2007. Warid Telecom
International LLC, an Abu Dhabi–based consortium, sold a majority 70% stake in the
company to India's Bharti Airtel Limited for US$300 million.[42]

On 16 November 2016, airtel Bangladesh was merged into Robi as a product brand of Robi

Axiata, where Robi Axiata Limited is the Licensee of airtel Brand in Bangladesh. [43]Robi at
present is a joint venture between Axiata Group of Malaysia, Bharti Airtel, of India and NTT
Docomo Inc., of Japan. Axiata holds 68.7% controlling stake in the entity, Bharti holds 25%
while the remaining 6.3% is held by NTT Docomo of Japan.[44]

52
Sri Lanka[edit]
Main article: airtel Sri Lanka

Bharti Airtel Lanka (Pvt) Ltd is a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel Limited. Bharti Airtel has
been featured in Forbes Asia's Fab 50 list, rated amongst the best performing companies in
the world in the BusinessWeek IT 100 list 2007, and voted as India's most innovative
company in a survey by The Wall Street Journal[citation needed]

Airtel Lanka commenced commercial operations of services on 13 January 2009. Granted a

licence in 2007 in accordance with the Sri Lanka Telecommunications Act No. 25 of 1991, it
is also a registered company under the Board of Investment Sri Lanka. Under the license, the
company provides digital mobile services to Sri Lanka. This is inclusive of voice telephony,
voice mail, data services and GSM-based services. All of these services are provided under
the airtel brand.

Main article: Airtel-Vodafone

On 1 May 2007, Jersey Airtel and Guernsey Airtel, both wholly owned subsidiaries of
the Bharti Group, announced they would launch mobile services in the British Crown
Dependency islands of Jersey and Guernsey under the brand name Airtel-Vodafone after
signing an agreement with Vodafone. Airtel-Vodafone operates a 3G network in Jersey and
Guernsey.

Subscriber base[

Bharti Airtel has about 303.08 million subscribers worldwide—264.58 million in India and

South Asia and 50.949 million in Africa as of the end of December 2011. The numbers
include mobile services subscribers in 19 countries and Indian Telemedia services and
Digital services subscribers.

One Network

One Network is a mobile phone network that allows Airtel customers to use the service in a
number of countries at the same price as their home network. Customers can place outgoing
calls at the same rate as their local network, and incoming calls are free. [48] As of 2014, the
service is available in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo,
Congo Brazzaville, Gabon, Ghana, India, Kenya, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda,

53
Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia only for International
roamers from Airtel Africa

Acquisitions and mergers

MTN Group merger negotiations

In May 2008, it emerged that Airtel was exploring the possibility of buying the MTN Group,
a South Africa-based telecommunications company with operations in 21 countries in Africa
and the Middle East. The Financial Times reported that Bharti was considering offering
US$45 billion for a 100% stake in MTN, which would be the largest overseas acquisition
ever by an Indian firm. However, both sides emphasised the tentative nature of the talks. The
Economist magazine noted, "If anything, Bharti would be marrying up", as MTN had more
subscribers, higher revenues and broader geographic coverage. However, the talks fell apart
as MTN Group tried to reverse the negotiations by making Bharti almost a subsidiary of the
new company.[51]

In May 2009, Airtel confirmed that it was again in talks with MTN and both companies
agreed to discuss the potential transaction exclusively by 31 July 2009. Airtel said "Bharti
Airtel Ltd is pleased to announce that it has renewed its effort for a significant partnership
with MTN Group".The exclusivity period was extended twice up to 30 September 2009.
Talks eventually ended without agreement.

A solution was proposed where the new company would be listed on 2 stock exchanges, one
in South Africa and one in India. However, dual-listing of companies is not permitted by
Indian law.

Zain
Further information: Zain Group

In Jun 2010, Bharti struck a deal to buy Zain's mobile operations in 15 African countries, in

India's second biggest overseas acquisition after Tata Steel's $13 billion buy of Corus in
2007. Bharti Airtel completed its $10.7 billion acquisition of African operations from
Kuwaiti firm on 8 June 2010, making the Airtel the world's fifth largest wireless carrier by
subscriber base. Airtel has reported that its revenues for the fourth quarter of 2010 grew by
53% to US$3.2 billion compared to the previous year, newly acquired Zain Africa division
contributed US$911 million to the total. However, net profits dropped by 41% from

54
US$470 million in 2009 to US$291 million 2010 due to a US$188 million increase in radio
spectrum charges in India and an increase of US$106 million in debt interest.

Warid Bangladesh and Robi[edit]

Further information: Warid Bangladesh and Robi

In 2010, Warid Telecom sold a majority 70.90% stake in the company to Bharti Airtel for
US$300 million.[42] The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission approved
the deal on 4 January 2010. Bharti Airtel Limited took management control of the company
and its board, and rebranded the company's services under its own "airtel" brand from 20
December 2010. Warid Telecom sold its remaining 30% share to Bharti Airtel's Singapore-
based concern Bharti Airtel Holdings Pte Limited in March 2013.

On 16 November 2016, airtel Bangladesh was merged into Robi as a product brand of Robi,

where Robi Axiata Limited is the licensee of airtel brand in Bangladesh. [43] Robi is a joint
venture between Axiata Group holding 68.7%, Bharti Airtel holding 25%, and NTT
DoCoMo Inc. holding 6.3%.

Telecom Seychelles

On 11 August 2010, Bharti Airtel announced that it would acquire 100% stake in Telecom
Seychelles for US$62 million taking its global presence to 19 countries. Telecom Seychelles
began operations in 1998 and operates 3G, Fixed Line, ship to shore services satellite
telephony, among value added services like VSAT and Gateways for International Traffic
across the Seychelles under the Airtel brand. The company has over 57% share of the mobile
market of Seychelles. Airtel announced plans to invest US$10 million in its fixed and mobile
telecoms network in the Seychelles over three years, whilst also participating in the
Seychelles East Africa submarine cable (SEAS) project. The US$34 million SEAS project is
aimed at improving the Seychelles' global connectivity by building a 2,000 km undersea
high-speed link to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

Wireless Business Services Private Limited

On 24 May 2012, Airtel announced an agreement to acquire a 49% stake in Wireless

Business Services Private Limited (WBSPL) at an investment of ₹9.07
billion(US$130 million). WBSPL was a joint venture founded by Qualcomm, and held BWA
spectrum in the telecom circles of Delhi, Haryana, Kerala and Mumbai.[62] Qualcomm had

55
spent US$1 billion to acquire BWA spectrum in those 4 circles. The deal gave Airtel a 4G
presence in 18 circles. On 4 July 2013, Airtel announced that it had acquired an additional
2% equity share capital (making its stake 51%) in all the four BWA entities of Qualcomm,
thereby making them its subsidiaries. On 18 October 2013, Airtel announced that it had
acquired 100 percent equity shares of WBSPL for an undisclosed sum, [66][67] making it a
wholly owned subsidiary.

Augere Wireless

Airtel purchased Augere Wireless Broadband India Private Limited, a company that owned
4G spectrum in the Chhattisgarh-Madhya Pradesh circle for an undisclosed sum in December
2015. The Economic Times estimated Augere's spectrum to be worth ₹1.5
billion (US$22 million). On 16 February 2017, Airtel announced that the merger of Augere
Wireless into Bharti Airtel Limited had been completed.

Telenor India

On 2 January 2017, The Economic Times reported that Airtel had entered into discussions
with Telenor India to acquire the latter.[72][73] On 23 February 2017, Airtel announced that it
had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Telenor. As part of the deal, Airtel will
acquire Telenor India's assets and customers in all seven telecom circles that the latter
operates in - Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar
Pradesh (West) and Assam. Airtel will gain 43.4 MHz spectrum in the 1800 MHz band from
the Telenor acquisition. Business Standard reported that it was a no-cash deal, but would cost
Airtel ₹1,600 crore over a 10 year period due to spectrum licence payments.

Tikona 4G spectrum

On 23 March 2017, Airtel announced that it had entered an agreement with Tikona Digital
Networks Pvt. Ltd to purchase the latter's 4G spectrum for approximately ₹1,600 crore. The
deal also includes Tikona's 350 cellular sites in 5 circles. Tikona had purchased 20 MHz of
4G spectrum in the 2,300 MHz band in the 2010 auctions in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh,
Uttar Pradesh (East), Uttar Pradesh (West) and Rajasthan for ₹1,058 crore. Prior to the deal,
Airtel did not hold any spectrum in the 2300 MHz band in UP (East), UP (West) and
Rajasthan, and held 10MHz each in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.

Joint ventures and agreements

56
Airtel-Vodafone
Airtel-Vodafone

On 1 May 2007, Jersey Airtel and Guernsey Airtel, both wholly owned subsidiaries of
the Bharti Group, announced they would launch mobile services in the British Crown
Dependency islands of Jersey and Guernsey under the brand name Airtel-Vodafone after
signing an agreement with Vodafone. Airtel-Vodafone operates a 3G network in Jersey and
Guernsey.

Airtel-Ericsson

AIn July 2011, Bharti signed a five-year agreement with Ericsson, who will manage and
optimise Airtel's mobile networks in Africa. Ericsson will modernise and upgrade Airtel's
mobile networks in Africa with the latest technology including its multi standard RBS 6000
base station. As part of the modernisation, Ericsson will also provide technology consulting,
network planning & design and network deployment. Ericsson has been the managed
services and network technology partner in the Asian operations.

Rebranding

Logo used by Airtel till November 2010

On 18 November 2010, Airtel rebranded itself in India in the first phase of a global
rebranding strategy. The company unveiled a new logo with 'airtel' written in lower case.
Designed by London-based brand agency, The Brand Union, the new logo is the letter 'a' in
lowercase, with 'airtel' written in lowercase under the logo.[80] On 23 November 2010, Airtel's
Africa operations were rebranded to 'airtel'. Sri Lanka followed on 28 November 2010 and on
20 December 2010, Warid Telecom rebranded to 'airtel' in Bangladesh.

Sponsorship

On 9 May 2009 Airtel signed a major deal with Manchester United. As a result of the deal,
Airtel gets the rights to broadcast the matches played by the team to its customers.

57
Bharti Airtel signed a five-year deal with ESPN Star Sports to become the title sponsor of
the Champions League Twenty20 cricket tournament. But now the deal is terminated
andKarbonn Mobiles is sponsoring Champions League Twenty20 cricket.

Airtel, also signed a deal to be title sponsor the inaugural Formula One Indian Grand
Prix during the 2011 season.

Airtel, signed a deal to be title sponsor the I-League for 2013–14 I-League.[83]

Signature tune

The signature tune of Airtel is composed by Indian musician A. R. Rahman. The tune
became hugely popular and is the world's most downloaded mobile music with over 150
million downloads. A. R. Rahman along with Anu Malik has re-used the same tune in
Kannada movie titled Love.[84] A new version of the song was released on 18 November
2010, as part of the rebranding of the company. This version too was composed by Rahman
himself.

Green initiative

GreenTowers P7 program

Bharti Infratel is the only telecom tower company, which has installed almost 3 MWT of
solar capacity on their network, generating more than 5 million units of electricity every year.
The Green Towers P7 program is scoped for 22,000 tower sites (primarily rural areas having
low or no Grid Power availability) out of which 5,500 sites have already been implemented
in the first year as a part of this 3-year program. Once completed, the initiative will reduce
diesel consumption by 66 million litres per year with a significant carbon dioxide reduction
of around 150,000 MT per year. Bharti Infratel received the 2011 'Green Mobile Award ' at
the GSMA Mobile World Congress at Barcelona and was also awarded the 2010 innovative
infrastructure company of the year award at the CNBC Infrastructure Awards for this
groundbreaking initiative. Bharti remains the first company in the world to introduce the
practice of sharing of passive infrastructure by collaborating with their competition to share

58
mobile towers and to reduce the collective carbon footprint of the industry. [citation needed] This
has become a subject of case studies in institutions including the Harvard Business School.

Energy conservation

The company has installed solar hot water generator at its main campus in Gurgaon for
fulfilling the hot water requirement in the cafeteria. Majority of its facilities across NCR
region are now equipped with LES (lighting energy savers) which have reduced energy
consumption in the lighting system to the tune of 10–25%. Variable frequency drives
installed in the air handling unit at its campus have helped in enhancing the efficiency of
cooling system by 10%. These measures have resulted in a total saving of 850,000 units of
electricity per year.

Airtel has embarked upon technology related initiatives like virtualisation of servers that has
helped it release over 500 CPUs. Also the drive of sending e-bills to the post-paid customers
is helping save 12,840 trees annually. Within its campus the 'Secure Print Solution'—an
automated queue management-based secured printing solution has led to an annualised
saving of about 8 metric tonnes of paper.


Alternative energy sources such as solar energy used at 1050 sites saving 6.9 million
litres of diesel and approximately ₹280 million (US$4.2 million).

Energy efficiency measures such as Integrated Power Management Systems and
variable speed DC generators have resulted in reduction in the rate of diesel consumption
by 1.2 million liters, leading to savings of ₹47 million (US$700,000) across 900 sites.

Demand side management like free cooling units instead of air conditioners has been
implemented across 3400+ sites, saving consumption of 4.1 million liters of diesel.[87]

Controversies

Net neutrality debate

For more details on this topic, see Net neutrality in India.

In February 2014, Gopal Vittal, CEO of Airtel's India operations, said that companies
offering free messaging apps like Skype, Line and Whatsapp should be regulated similar to
telecom operators. In August 2014, TRAI rejected a proposal from telecom companies to
make messaging application firms share part of their revenue with the carriers or the

59
government. In November 2014, TRAI began investigating if Airtel was implementing
preferential access by offering special Internet packs which allowed WhatsApp and
Facebook data at rates which were lower than its standard data rates.
[91]
 The statements of Chua Sock Koong, Group CEO of Singtel and also shareholder
(32.15%) of Bharti Airtel share similar statements about the Anti-Net Neutrality position.

In December 2014, Airtel changed its service terms for 2G and 3G data packs so that VoIP
data was excluded from the set amount of free data. A standard data charge of 4 paise
(0.059¢ US) per 10 KB for 3G service and 10 paise (0.15¢ US) per 10 KB (more
than ₹10,000 (US$150) for 1GB) for 2G service was levied on VoIP data. A few days later
Airtel announced a separated internet pack for VoIP apps, it offered 75 MB
for ₹75 (US$1.10) with a validity of 28 days.[93] The TRAI chief Rahul Khullar said that
Airtel cannot be held responsible for violating net neutrality because India has no regulation
that demands net neutrality. Airtel's move faced criticism on social networking sites like
Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. Later on 29 December 2014, Airtel announced that it would
not be implementing planned changes, pointing out that there were reports that TRAI would
be soon releasing a consultation paper on the issue.

In April 2015, Airtel announced the "Airtel Zero" scheme. Under the scheme, app firms will
sign a contract and Airtel will provide the apps for free to its customers. The reports
ofFlipkart, an e-commerce firm, joining the "Airtel Zero" scheme drew negative response.
People began to give the one-star rating to its app on Google Play. Following the
protest Flipkart decided to pull out of Airtel Zero. The e-commerce giant confirmed the news
in an official statement, saying, "We will be walking away from the ongoing discussions with
Airtel for their platform Airtel Zero.

In October 2016, India's telecom regulator TRAI recommended imposing a combined

penalty of Rs 3,050 crore on three mobile network operators — Vodafone, Bharti Airtel and
Idea Cellular — for denying interconnection to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio Infocomm
(RJio), the latest entrant into India’s telecom service.

User privacy

In June 2015, a code used by the company was accused of compromising subscribers privacy

60
 ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE:
As an outcome of a restructuring exercise conducted within the company; a new integrated
organizational structure has emerged; with realigned roles, responsibilities and reporting
relationships of Bharti’s key team players. With effect from March 01, 2008, this unified
management structure of 'One Airtel' will enable continued improvement in the delivery of
the Group’s strategic vision.

61
 MANAGEMENT PROFILES
 Sunil Bharti Mittal
 Rajan Bharti Mittal
 Akhil Gupta
 Manoj Kohli
 Sarvjit S. Dhillon
 Daljit Singh
 Viresh Dayal
 Senjam Raj Sekhar
 Anil Nayar
 Ashok Juneja
 Dr. Jai Menon
 Hemant Sachdev
 Narender Gupta
 Norman Donald
 Tina Uneken
 John Thompson
 Vijaya Sampath
 Harish Dua
 Sanjay Kapoor
 K. Krishnan
 Vinod Sawhny
 Sanjay Nandrajog
 Atul Bindal
 Jayant Khosla
 K.Srinivas
 N. Arjun
 Mohan Menon
 Mohan Menon

62
Sunil Bharti Mittal
Chairman & Managing Director since October 2001

Board director since: July 1995

Age: 56 years

Sunil Bharti Mittal is the Chairman & Managing Director of Bharti Airtel Ltd.
head quartered at New Delhi, India.  
Bharti Airtel, India’s leading private integrated telecom company has been at
the forefront of the telecom revolution and has transformed the telecom sector with its
world-class services built on leading edge technologies.  Bharti has been a pioneering
force in the telecom sector and today enjoys a strong nationwide presence. Sunil
started his career at a young age of 18 after graduating from Punjab University in
India and founded Bharti, with a modest capital, in the year 1976.  Today, at 49 he
heads a successful enterprise, amongst the top 5 in India, with a market capitalization
of over US$ 40 billion and employing over 30,000 people.
Bharti has grown successfully in partnership with various leading companies of the
world - Singapore Telecom, Vodafone, Warburg Pincus, British Telecom to name a
few.
The other businesses in the group are consumer electronics (Beetle), life insurance
with AXA of France (Bharti AXA), and a joint venture with the Rothschild group to
develop Indian horticulture and export fruits and vegetable to the world.
ATUL BINDAL

President- AirtelTelemediaServices
Atul was appointed President of Airtel Telemedia Services business unit in
October 2006. He is a member on the Airtel Management Board (AMB) and chairs
the Broadband & Telephone Services Management Board (BTMB).
Prior to assuming his current position, Atul was Executive Director South for the
Mobile Services business unit. He joined Bharti Airtel in June 2003 as Group Chief
Marketing Officer and Director Mobility.
  Before moving to Bharti, Atul was Commercial Director, Asia Pacific with DHL in
Singapore with executive responsibilities for sales, marketing, customer service,
pricing and e-commerce for the US$1.5 bn region.

63
 Earlier, he served with AlliedSignal/Honeywell for almost 7 years across India, Asia
Pacific and USA in various operating and functional roles. During the earlier part of
his career he worked in marketing, sales and general management with American
Express, Lipton and Shell.
 
PRODUCT RANGE SERVICES OFFERED BY AIRTEL
 Enterprises services
 Mobile services
 Broad band telephone services
 Long Distance Services

 DTH service

Airtel Enterprise Services

The Company compliments its mobile and broadband & telephone Services with
national and international long distance services. It has over 35,016 route kilometers of optic
fiber on its national long distance network. For international connectivity to east, it has a
submarine cable landing station at. For international connectivity to the west, the Company is
a member of the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe – 4 (SEA-ME-WE-4)
consortiums Along with 15 other global telecom operators.
The group focuses on delivering telecommunications services as an Integrated offering
including mobile, broadband & telephone, national and International long distance and data
connectivity services to corporate, small and medium scale enterprises.

The company is a part of Bharti Enterprises, and is India's leading provider of

telecommunications services. The businesses at Bharti Airtel have been structured into three
individual strategic business units (SBU’s) - mobile services, broadband & telephone
services (B&T) & enterprise services. The mobile services group provides GSM mobile
services across India in 23 telecom circles, while the B&T business group provides
broadband & telephone services in 90 cities. The Enterprise services group has two sub-units
- carriers (long distance services) and services to corporate. All these services are provided
under the Airtel brand.

64
Long Distance Services

Airtel Long Distance Services is India's first private long distance communications service
provider. We are committed to providing world-class long distance Voice and Data
communication services to the Indian customer. We have deployed 25000 km long advanced
fiber optic multi-technology network covering more than 200 cities in the country.

We are a fully owned subsidiary of India's leading private telecom group, Bharti Tele-
Ventures, which has interests across the telecom chain. We are instrumental in making Long
distance communication affordable for the Indian consumer by catalyzing 62% and 50%
reduction in the monopolistic STD and ISD rates respectively.

For the first time in India, Airtel Long Distance Services has provided robust SLA-based,
highly reliable data connectivity to meet the high bandwidth requirements of large service
providers.

We have entered into strategic alliances with leading service providers, both domestic and
international, to provide high quality, end-to-end domestic and international long distance
services to the customers.

Our product offering includes STD/ISD prepaid cards and pre-paid cards for Indians
traveling abroad.
Broadband And Telephone Services
B Airtel Broadband & Telephone Services, India's premium telecommunication service
brings to you a whole new experience in telephony. From integrated Voice Services for
corporate and small business enterprises to user friendly plans for homes, we bring
innovative, cost-effective solutions to cater to your need soadband services
Solution for your Home services:
Reach out through Airtel Broadband & Telephone Services and enjoy great value for money.
With Airtel, you can experience world class telephone and internet services, just as unique as
your needs. Enjoy amazing value and benefits and make staying in touch a joy.
Airtel provides a 24x7 customer care operation geared to meet your requirements and ensure
that we are always a phone call away.

65
 ABOUT AIRTEL
Sunil Bharti Mittal or SBM as he is called has at the age of 43 created a Telecom Giant in
India. It has risen from humble beginnings in 1970’s as a bicycle parts manufacturer,
knitwear and stainless steel utensils in Ludhiana, Punjab state. Together with other foreign
companies he has raised $ 1.5 billion of which $ 800 million is still in the bank.
Bharti happens to be India’s premier telecom company in the field of telecom terminals and
technology tie ups with world leaders like “Siemens, Gold star, Tatacom and Casio. It is the
first company in India to export telephones to U.S.A and has finalized plans to manufacture
GSM terminals in India.

The success story of Bharti Enterprises can be acknowledged from the fact that Bharti has
acquired 44% of stake of British Telecom, which was up till now one of the partners with
Bharti Enterprises for $140.2 joint venture. The transaction was worth 100 million pounds.

Bharti Enterprises controls about 20 % of the Total Telecom market in India. As he puts it, it
was a mixture of Vision, good luck and hard work by a team of about 10 –12 senior people.
The early beginnings in 1985 were in manufacturing telephone handsets. They did not have
the expertise to do telephone exchanges, jelly -filled cables had become a commodity and
their capital investment was high.
Bharti Tele-Ventures Limited was incorporated on July 7, 1995 for promoting investments in
telecommunications services. Its subsidiaries operate telecom services across India. Bharti
Tele-Ventures is India's leading private sector provider of telecommunications services based
on a strong customer base consisting of approximately 11.50 million total customers which
constitute, approximately 10.66 million mobile and approximately 836,000 fixed line
customers, as of January 31, 2005.
 Bharti Teletech
Bharti Teletech deals with telecom equipment manufacturing. Bharti Teletech has 2
subsidiaries “Siemens Telecom and Bharti Duraline.
Siemens Telecom is a joint venture between the global giants Siemens AG and Bharti
Telecom. This alliance has brought to the Indian market the unmatched technology of
Siemens and the manufacturing strength of Bharti Telecom. Siemens Telecom markets its
product under the brand names of “Siemens” and “Beetle”. The Siemens ranges of
telephones include electronic push button phones, feature phones and the latest GSM cellular
phones.
66
 “Beetels commitment to quality, value and durability has made it the largest selling
cordless phone in India.
Bharti Duraline – Bharti Duraline is a translation of Bharti’s commitment to serve the
growing telecom market in India. This joint venture with Duraline Corp of U.S.A
manufacture and markets high quality SILCORE TM HDPE telecom ducts. Duraline USA
gas prestigious customers like AT&T, Lucent technologies, Sprint MCI, Ericsson etc.

 Bharti Telecom
In the past few decades the telecom industry across the world has gone through a
sea change and India has not been away from the technological revolution. Bharti Telecom
the flagship company of Bharti Enterprises has continuously introduced world-class telecom
products and services.
From the introduction of push button telephones backing telephones to answering machines
from cordless telephones to cellular services Bharti is breaking new grounds with host of new
brands like Airtel and Beetel. Bharti Telecom has emerged as India’s finest Telecom
Company.

Incorporated in 1985 Bharti Telecom is one of the largest Telecom companies in the country.

Bharti Telecom provides various basic /cellular services, Internet services and VSAT’s etc.
through its several subsidiaries and joint ventures. The two subsidiaries of Bharti Telecom
are “Bharti Televenture” and “Bharti Telepatial”.

 Bharti Televenture

Bharti Televenture Ltd. was incorporated on 7 th July 1995. BTVL has been floated
by Bharti Telecom Ltd. as Telecom operator to hold equity stake and to wide management
services to cellular and fixed line Telecom Projects in India.Bharti Televenture is a holding
company for Bharti Cellular and Bharti Telenet.

 Bharti Cellular

Bharti Cellular Ltd offers cellular service under the brand name of Airtel.
 Bharti Telnet
Bharti Telenet offers fixed line services in M.P. (Indore) and cellular services in H.P.
the company the first private operator to provide fixed line services under the country. It

67
launched its fixed lines services on 4th June 1998 in Indore, and as developed the customer
based of over 35,000. The company as a market share of 80% in H.P. for its cellular
services.

 Bharti Telespatial

Bharti Telespatial provides Internet services and VSAT’s. It has gain two
subsidiaries “Bharti BT” and “Bharti BT Internet”.

AIRTEL – AN UNFLINCHED BRAND

Aortal, a part of Bharti Cellular Ltd., was conceived and nurtured under the adages of
the Bharti and was born on the 14th day of November 1995, as the original licensee to provide
Cellular Telephony to the customer base in the national capital New Delhi.

Since its inception in 1995, Air Tel has never looked back and has changed the way
true leaders of Delhi talk, communicate, work and indeed live. It has consistently been the
leader with its undisputed “Power to keep in Touch” and has been chalking up a number of
first in its journey to commanding the heights of the cellular industry.

Its belief to leverage the latest technologies and to deliver value to its customers was
manifest within a span of a year and a half of its launch. It expanded its network with the
installation of its second MSC (Mobile Switching Center) raising its capacity 5, 00,000 lines,
thereby becoming the first Cellular Operator in the country to have done so. This was further
enhanced with the introduction of SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy) and the CCS7
Signaling. The Bharti Group is pulling out all the stops to ensure that Air Tel maintains its
leadership over Essar & Dolphin in the Delhi Market. This is crucial as Bharti Cellular has
almost 3,25,000 subscribers, but with Hutchison taking a 49% stake in Essar – promoted
Sterling Cellular and planning to roll out its Orange Brand in the city, the gap between the
two operators could narrow.

It has put at the disposal of its subscribers a wide array of convenience enhancing Value
added Services like:

 Web Message

 Smart Mail,

68
  Short Message Service,

 Fax Facility,

 Call Conferencing,

 Call Hold,

 Call Forwarding,

 Call Waiting,

Calling Party line Identification and several others on line services available to its customers.

 Wireless Application Protocol Service

 SMS Chat

As a duty to retain its valuable customer base, as well as efforts to bring the churned
customers, Aortal has launched its Aortal Leadership Retention Program to provide various
privileged facilities and discounts along with points earning.

Air Tel ushered in anytime, anywhere, simple cellular telephony in Delhi with the launch of
Magic Ready Cellular Card in January 1999. This competency of Magic Dalo, say Hello!
Has further increased Aortal Power to keep in touch! It is based on the Intelligent Network
and is compatible with all GSM handsets.

69
 TECHNOLOGY AT AIRTEL

The company uses GSM technology as prescribed by the Dot. The network has been
supplied and installed on turnkey basis by Ericsson, Sweden, which is the world leader in
cellular technology. The local office of Ericsson provides support and maintenance services.
The network audit is carried out from time to time association with Mobile System
International, UK to ensure better coverage and speech quality. The billing system has been
provided by SEMA, UK.

The Intelligent Network (IN) installed from Ericsson, Sweden would enable the company to
offer products like Virtual Private Network (VPN) Solution, On Demand Services etc, apart
from flexibility in tariffing.

The company has almost 157 Base stations providing almost 1005 coverage in the service
area and flat terrain in the city has initially helped the quick roll out in record time. The
Company has 2 MSCs in the city, on in the Southeast and the other in Northwest. The
company has also laid 75km of OFC in the city to provide SDH rings to augment the existing
base station network call handling capacity. The company was initially granted 4.5 MHz of
frequency bandwidth by the Dot, which has now been increased o 6 MHz’s

The marketing strategy at Aortal has always been to identify and attract a high usage
subscriber base through a strong brand identity for the Aortal brand name and to associate the
name with high quality customer service, a full range of network services and competitive
pricing. Aortal provides its customer service personnel with subscriber, product and billing
information to enable them to respond promptly. The data generated from the exit interviews
conducted with those subscribers who have terminated services, is used for the process to
improve services where warranted.

70
 INFORMATION ABOOUT AIRTEL BROADBAND
AIRTEL BROADBAND
Airtel Broadband is powered by DSL technology. DSL provides blazing-fast, secure Internet
access and can. Vary from 128Kb to 8Mb per second depending on the type and cost of the
service.

DSL
Simply put, broadband is a high-speed connection to the Internet that is always on.
Broadband is faster than a standard dial-up, enabling you to view web content faster and
download files more quickly. Besides being much faster, broadband is more reliable than
dial-up due to broad band’s digital nature and always on connectivity. With broadband, when
you turn on your computer, you're already connected to the Internet and ready to surf at high
speeds.
WHAT IS DSL?
The full form of DSL is Digital Subscriber Line. DSL internet is faster than cable
internet. It is a broadband internet connection and files can be uploaded and downloaded
quickly. The most important point is that you do not require any new cabling to be connected
to DSL internet. You can simultaneously connect through the phone lines for accessing
internet and receive
Airtel offers a great plan for unlimited broadband internet connection in some states:

Option A: Rs.799 a month for 256 kbps Unlimited

Option B: Rs.999 a month for 256 kbps Unlimited

71
The Beetel TERA 100 U Modem

There are no limits on download, no blocked ports (as far as I know), and no internet filters
to prevent anyone from visiting any site. The service is generally reliable, with a decent
uptime of more than 90%. The plan comes with a modem, which is usually one of the
following:

 Zyxel (blue color)

 Beetel TERA 100 U (distributed by Yozan)
 Beetel 100 CX

All these 2 are USB modems with only one computer connection. If you are using Linux,
BSD or x64-bit Windows; there are no drivers for the above modems to work on these OS.
So, ask for one of the below routers instead:

 D-Link ASDL Router DSL-502T

 Beetel Broadband Router

ROUTER CONFIGURATION

The Airtel staff will usually set up the internet for you initially, but won't configure the router
to allow port forwarding. Port forwarding is necessary for several internet applications and
file sharing programs to work with.

72
 1) What are ports ?
Your computer has several ports through which applications connect to the internet. There
are a total of 2^16 = 65,536 ports. An application may need to use one or more ports when it
is running. Through the ports, it will send and receive data from other computers on the net.
Applications cannot share a port while running at the same time. An exception is HTTP
Tunneling, see Corkscrew. It is however widely acknowledged that certain ports are
associated with certain applications. For example, port 80 is used for HTTP (i.e. your
connection to the WWW); port 21 is used for FTP and so on. You can find an entire list of
ports and their associated applications here:

73
BROADBAND ADVANTAGE
Now experience the internet in a new way with Airtel Broadband. It is powered by DSL
technology which gives you blazing-fast; secure Internet access as soon as you switch on
your computer.
We give you the power of limitless discovery on Internet  – from shopping to banking,
paying bills to making new friends and not to mention endless fun & learning for children.
SWITCH TODAY TO AIRTEL BROADBAND!
Why wait to connect
With Airtel Broadband, the internet is always ON, always available! No more waiting for
dial-up to connect. You are ready to use the internet as soon as you switch on your computer.
POWER SURFING
With speed of up to 2Mbps, feel the excitement of doing more on Internet. Shop, download
MP3, exchange heavy files and chat at an enviable speed, all thanks to an extensive
Broadband Services infrastructure. No more disconnections in the middle of download.
SURF WHILE YOU TALK!
No more missed calls or blocked telephone lines while using the internet. Airtel Broadband
Services connection does not block existing telephone lines and allows one family member to
use the phone while another member surfs the net. No more missed calls and no more fights!
ROBUST INSTALLATION
Our world class infrastructure & end-to-end digital network of underground copper cable
lines ensure an extremely robust connection that eliminates the risk of damage. Superior
server technology and a dedicated port provide
security to data storage and information exchange through the Internet.
AIRTEL TARIFFS
Experience a Broadband life and discover endless possibilities. Download your favorite
songs, play exclusive games, send or receive large documents photos as email attachments on
a lightening fast, secure & reliable Internet connection. With Airtel’ shigh speed Broadband,
enjoy superior way to access rich information of internet with enough fun & learning for
everyone. To find out the Airtel broadband & internet tariffs available in your city, please
select your location from the drop-down. Broadband

74
 Internet definition as per the TRAI -Always on connection with minimum download speed
of 256 kbps.
Features:
 Amazingly quick, always-on connection
 Dedicated bandwidth
 No additional telephone bills for internet usage
 Ability to make phone calls abroad through the internet
 Talk while you surf
 Robust installation of underground cables
Technical Specifications:
 Local Interface.
 One port 10BaseT Ethernet, IEEE 802.3, RJ-45 connector.
 WAN ADSL Line Interface.
 Connector : RJ-11.
 Temperature : 0°C ~ 45°C
 Humidity : 5% ~ 95% Non-condensing
 Physical Dimensions : (WxDxH) 220mm X 169mm X 40mm
 AC Adapter :Input 110 VAC/60Hz or 220VAC/50Hz; Output 12VDC 1A
 Power Consumption : Less than 10 Watts

75
AIRTEL BROADBAND LIMITED PLAN IN UP EAST
Tariff Plans Surf 749 (Airtel/UE/FL/002)

Monthly Charges
Monthly Commitment (Rs.) 749
Free Call Value Rs.100
Local Minutes NA
STD Minutes NA
Broadband Data Transfer Limit 8 GB
Download Spped* 256 Kbps in Day/1 Mbps in Night*
CLI Charges Nil
Local Pulse Rate Fixed Line(Rs.) Airtel Calls-60p/min, Other Calls-75p/min
Local Pulse Rate Mobile(Rs.) Airtel Calls-60p/min, Other Calls-75p/min
Additional BB Usage(Rs.MB) 0.5/MB
Call Duration
Local Fixed Line 60 sec
Local Mobile 60 sec
Internet NA
STD (Any Where) 60 sec
Fixed Charges(Rs.)
Modem
Installation Charges(Non Rs.500
refundable)
Wifi
Installation Charges (NonRs.1000
refundable)
Value Added Services
PC Secure NA
Speed On Demand NA
Games On Demand NA
Airtel NA
Online Desktop NA
Others NA

AIRTEL BROADBAND UNLIMITED PLAN IN UP EAST

Tariff Plans Freedom Freedom Swift Turbo
1699(Airtel/ 2999(Airtel/ 1099(Airtel/UE/F 1299(Airtel/UE/F

76
 UE/FL/007) UE/FL/009) L/003) L/006)
Montly Charges
Montly Commitment1699 2999 1099 1299
(Rs.)
Free Call Value Rs.100 Rs.300 Rs.100 Rs.100
Local Minutes NA NA NA NA
STD Minutes NA NA NA NA
BroadbandData Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited Unlimited
Transfer Limit
DownloadSpeed 1 Mbps* 2 Mbps* 512 Kbps* 512 Kbps in Day/1
Mbps in Night*
CLI Charges(Rs.) NIL NIL NIL NIL
Local Pulse RateAirtel Calls- Airtel Calls- Airtel Calls-1p/sec, Airtel Calls-1p/sec,
Fixedline (Rs.) 1p/sec, 1p/sec, OtherOther Calls-Other Calls-
Other Calls-Calls- 1.2p/sec 1.2p/sec
1.2p/sec 1.2p/sec
Local Pulse RateAirtel Calls- Airtel Calls- Airtel Calls-1p/sec, Airtel Calls-1p/sec,
Mobile(Rs) 1p/sec, 1p/sec, OtherOther Calls-Other Calls-
Other Calls-Calls- 1.2p/sec 1.2p/sec
1.2p/sec 1.2p/sec
Additional BB UsageNil Nil Nil Nil
(Rs.MB)
Call Duration
Local Fixed Line 1 sec 1 sec 1 sec 1 sec
Local Mobile 1 sec 1 sec 1 sec 1 sec
Internet NA NA NA NA
STD (Any Where) 1 sec 1 sec 1 sec 1 sec
Fixed Charges(Rs.)
Modem
InstallationCharges 500 500 500 500
(Non refundable)
Wifi
InstallationCharges 1000 1000 1000 1000
(Non refundable)
Value Added Services
PC Secure Rs.100 Rs.100 NA Rs.100

77
Speed On Demand Rs.100 NA NA Rs.100
Games On Demand Rs.199 Rs.199 NA Rs.199
Airtel Mail NA NA NA NA
Online Desktop Rs.99 Rs.99 NA NA
Others NA NA NA NA

Speed Qualifier: Speed indicated is the speed up to our ISP node.

78
VALUE ADDED SERVICES PROVIDED BY AIRTEL DSL

Have you gone “wireless”? Chances are that your new laptop has. And it’s not about
technology really, it’s simply about convenience. Wireless also means that there are
no wires connecting the company PCs and your laptop is a click away into your
corporate LAN. What makes the Broadband Service from Airtel enabled by DSL
technology a good Wi-Fi choice?

Be in control of your Home and Business with Airtel’s video surveillance solution.
It's like being there! 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A PC based multi-channel
solution that utilizes the most advanced digital video compression technologies to
bring you the highest still picture quality and video clarity.

79
 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
An objective is the most important part of a research .The objective is the bull’s eye,
which a researcher has to hit. The objective determines the path on which a researcher
has to walk on, and help him/her by not deveining from the path.

 To analyse brand loyalty of customers towards the company’s products range.

 Analyse consumer satisfaction for after sales service provided by Airtel .
 Analyse the Consumer behaviour of among Airtel .
 To get aware with the procedure of marketing department.

 To know organizational structure and specifically marketing department.

 To analyze the awareness of customer of Airtel

80
 SCOPE OF STUDY
The scope formulation is the first step to a successful Research process. Project undertaken
the problem of analyzing the consumer satisfaction and buying behavior levlel about two
wheeler with special reference to Airtel in lucknow

IMPORTANCE AND USE OF THE STUDY

To keep things in mind that as the ever changing competitive business environment. New
thoughts and ideas should pour into its, Research & Development to innovate its existing
products which should be beyond competitors comprehension.
This study enables the user with answer to formulate an effective marketing mix strategy
with a broader prospective to tap areas where it did not feel the need earlier, hence the
decision of whether to penetrate this section or not can be found out at the end of the data
analysis.
It also gives an idea of the potential of our business in the future & the fluctuation in prices
from time to time & from product to product.
Special reference is made to the improvement of ability of product in terms of packaging&
product innovations & advertisement always means to cut down competitors.

81
 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

INTRODUCTION
This chapter aims to understand the research methodology establishing a framework of
evaluation and revaluation of primary and secondary research. The techniques and concepts
used during primary research in order to arrive at findings; which are also dealt with and lead
to a logical deduction towards the analysis and results

RESEARCH DESIGN
The research design applied here was exploratory research
Exploratory Research is one in we don’t know about the problem, we have to find about the
problem and then work on solving the problem. Whereas in case of descriptive research, we
know the problem, we just have to find the solution to the problem. Generally descriptive
research design is applied after exploratory research design.
Here after doing the secondary research, we found the general perception about the retail
baking but then in second phase we tried to figure out where the difference lies and on what
basis the banks differ from each other

RESEARCH TOOL
Research tool
The purpose is to first conduct a intensive secondary research to understand the full impact
and implication of the industry, to review and critique the industry norms and reports, on
which certain issues shall be selected, which remain unanswered , this shall be further taken
up in the next stage of secondary research. This stage shall help to restrict and select only
the important question and issue, which inhabit growth and segmentation in the industry.
DATA COLLECTION:
Both primary and secondary data have been collected very vigorously
Secondary data: it is collected by the study of various reports. The reports studied under
secondary data. Primary Data was taken with questionnaire

82
 THE RESEARCH REPORT

The report is the result of a survey which was undertaken in Lucknow city. The objectives
of the project has been fulfilled by getting response from the customer associated to these
segments through a personal interview in the form of a questionnaire. The responses
available through the questionnaire are used to evaluate the consumer satisfaction and
consumer behaviour for the products of Airtel and the willingness of the customer to
purchase its products on future.
The project also covers an analysis of the switch over of customers to competitors products
in the market.

THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

The problem formulation is the first step to a successful Research process.
Project undertaken the problem of analyzing the consumer buying behaviour in Airtel

THE RESEARCH OBJECTIVE

Based on the problem the objective of the research is divided into two which
are as follows:
Primary Objective:
 To analyse consumer behaviour towards the company’s products range.
Secondary Objective:
 Analyse consumer satisfaction for different Airtel products.
 Analyse the Consumer behaviour of Airtel.

83
 THE RESEARCH DESIGN
The research design used in the project is exploratory design. The
investigation is carried upon the customers in Lucknow city. The reason for choosing this
design is to get responses from the customers so that their buying behaviour about the
products of the company and their loyalty could be predicted.

THE DATA SOURCE

The data has been taken from two sources
 Primary data source
The primary data source has been collected through questionnaire by personally
interviewing each respondent on a number of queries structured in a questionnaire.
 Secondary data source
Secondary data was collected from following sources
Prior research reports
Websites
Books
Newspaper
Personal consultation

THE AREA OF WORK

The field work is conducted in the Lucknow city in various Places like Mall,
Showroom and retailers situated in different location all over the city.

THE SAMPLE SIZE

The sample size consists of 100 units out of which the most logical and non
biased response are selected thus the sample size is taken out to be 100 units.

84
 LIMITATION
Though, best efforts have been made to make the study fair, transparent and
error free. But there might be some inevitable and inherent limitations. Though outright
measure are undertaken to make the report most accurate.
The limitation of the survey are narrated below:
 The project is valid for Lucknow city only.
 It was not possible to cover each and every respondent due to time constrains.
 There may be some biased response form the respondents
 Some respondents did not provide the full data.
 Unwillingness on the part of the customers to disclose the information as per the
questionnaire.
 The decisiveness on the part of the customers regarding some question hence difficulty
faced in recording and analyzing the data.

85
 DATA ANALYSIS
1. Do you like the idea of purchasing Airtel services?

Yes 87
No 13

13%

87%

Yes No

INTERPRETATION
87% respondent said that they have idea of purchasing Airtel services but 13% are not

86
2. Have you ever purchase services of Airtel ?

Yes 77
No 23

23%

77%

Yes No

INTERPRETATION
77% respondent said that they have ever purchase services of Airtel but 23% are not

87
3. What helps you to decide which services of Airtel you purchase ?
TV Advertisement 23
Personal recommendation 36
Special offer 11
Radio advertising 17
News paper 7
Word of mouth 6

7% 6% 23%
17%

11%
36%

TV Advertisement Personal recommendation

Special offer Radio advertising
News paper Word of mouth

INTERPRETATION
23% respondent said that they decide to purchase the services of Airtel by TV advertisement,
36 personal recommendation, 11% special offer, 17% radio advertising, 7% from News
paper and 6% word of mouth.

88
4. How frequently you see advertisement of Airtel ?
Weekly 27
Monthly 37
daily 27
None 19

17% 25%

25%
33%

Weekly Monthly daily None

INTERPRETATION
25% respondent said that they have see advertisement of Airtel weekly, 33% monthly, 25%
daily, but 17% none.

89
5. For which one of the following purpose you visit in your product ?
Purchasing brand goods 57
Purchasing local goods 23
Only gathering information 11
Others 9

9%
11%

57%
23%

Purchasing brand goods Purchasing local goods

Only gathering information Others

INTERPRETATION
57% respondent said that they have purpose to visit product purchasing brand goods, 23%
purchasing local goods, 11% only gathering information and 9% others.

90
6. What according to you are attractive features that buy Airtel services?

Quality 32
Economy 49
Performance 19

19%
32%

49%

Quality Economy performance

INTERPRETATION
32% respondent said that they have attractive features that buy Airtel services Quality, 49%
Economy, 19% performance.

91
7 Are you satisfy with Airtel services?

Yes 91
No 9

9%

91%

Yes No

INTERPRETATION
91% respondent said that they satisfied buy 9% no.

92
8. Do according to you Airtel have changed the way the Consumer behavior towards
telecom services?

Yes 71
No 29

29%

71%

Yes No

INTERPRETATION
71% respondent said that Airtel services have changed the way the Consumer behavior
towards Airtel services Yes but 29% said no.

93
9. Do you suggest Airtel services to others
Yes 89
No 11

11%

89%

Yes No

INTERPRETATION
89% respondent said that they suggest Airtel services to others yes but 11 said no.

94
10. How will you rate your present Airtel performance?
Poor 7
Satisfactory 23
Fair 27
Good 21
Very good 13
Excellent 9

9% 7%
13% 23%

21%
27%

Poor Satisfactory Fair Good Very good Excellent

INTERPRETATION
7% respondent said that they rate your present Airtel performance poor, 23% satisfactory,
27% fair, 21% good, 13% very good, 9% excellent.

95
 FINDINGS
 87% respondent said that they have idea of purchasing Airtel services but 13% are not
 77% respondent said that they have ever purchase services of Airtel but 23% are not
 23% respondent said that they decide to purchase the services of Airtel by TV
advertisement, 36 personal recommendation, 11% special offer, 17% radio
advertising, 7% from News paper and 6% word of mouth.
 25% respondent said that they have see advertisement of Airtel weekly, 33%
monthly, 25% daily, but 17% none.
 57% respondent said that they have purpose to visit product purchasing brand goods,
23% purchasing local goods, 11% only gathering information and 9% others.
 32% respondent said that they have attractive features that buy Airtel Quality, 49%
Economy, 19% performance.
 91% respondent said that they satisfied buy 9% no.
 71% respondent said that Airtel have changed the way the Consumer behavior
towards Airtel Yes but 29% said no.
 89% respondent said that they suggest Airtel to others yes but 11 said no.
 7% respondent said that they rate your present Airtel product performance poor, 23%
satisfactory, 27% fair, 21% good, 13% very good, 9% excellent.

96
 SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATION

The recommendations are

 The brand loyalty for more Airtel can be increased if the Quality and appearance of the
products are given due attention because Honda has captured a major share of telecom
market.

 The switch over of the customers can be prevented if more of new products are launched
more frequently like apple which launches new products with slight variations from the
previous.

 Quality are good but it still needs improvements.

97
 CONCLUSION

The report comes to the following conclusion

 The customers of Airtel are brand loyal with only a small percent want to shift over to
other brands. Trying of other brands by customers is mainly because the customer wants
to try something new.

 The performance of Airtel is fair in comparison to other pro brands.

 Economy is the basic feature influencing to built brand Image.

 The competition of Airtel is majorly vodafone .

 Due to high brand loyalty the customers of Airtel recommend its product to others.

 The customers are satisfied with the product range of Airtel.

98
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS AUTHORS

 Marketing Management : Philip Kotler

 Marketing Research : D. D. Sharma
 Research Methodology : C. R. Kothari
 Websites
 www.airtel.com
 www.google.com

99
 QUESTIONNIARE

Q1) Do you like the idea of purchasing services of Airtel ?

( a) Yes ( b) No
Q2) Have you ever purchase services of Airtel ?
( a) Yes ( b) No
Q3) What helps you to decide which services of cement you purchase?
( a) TV Advertisement ( b) Personal recommendation ( c) Special offer
( d) Radio advertising ( e) News paper ( f) Word of mouth
Q4) How frequently you made a purchase Airtel services ?
( a) Weekly ( b) Monthly ( c) Quarterly ( d) None
Q5) For which one of the following purpose you visit in your product ?
( a) Purchasing brand goods
(b) Purchasing local goods
(c) Only gathering information
(d) Others
Q6) What according to you are attractive features that buy Airtel ?
(a) Quality (b) Economy (c) performance
Q7) Are you satisfy with Airtel Product ?
(a) Yes (b) No
Q8) Do according to you Airtel have changed the way the Consumer behavior towards non gear
automobile ?
(a) Yes (b) No

100
Q9.Do you suggest Airtel services to others
 Yes
 No

Q10. How will you rate your present Airtel performance?

 Poor
 Satisfactory
 Fair
 Good
 Very good
 Excellent

101